One way the United States can decrease its greenhouse  gas emissions to reduce the extent of climate change  is to trap emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2 ) and store  them permanently underground. That process, known  as carbon capture and storage (CCS), is in limited use in  the United States. Recent increases in the federal government’s support for CCS are among a number of fac￾tors—whose future course and eventual impact are hard  to predict—that will determine the extent to which CCS  technology is deployed in coming years.Current Use of Carbon  Capture and Storage CCS removes carbon dioxide when it is emitted (before  it enters the atmosphere) at sources such as electric  power and industrial plants and sequesters the captured  CO2  underground. A different process, called direct air  capture, removes CO2  from the atmosphere. This report  focuses on capturing CO2  emissions through CCS where  the emissions are generated (called point-source capture). As of September 2023, 15 CCS facilities were operating  in the United States. Most of them are located at plants  that process natural gas or produce ethanol for fuel or  ammonia for fertilizer. Together, those 15 facilities have  the capacity to capture about 22 million metric tons of  CO2  per year, or 0.4 percent of the United States’ total  annual emissions of CO2 . Almost all of those facilities  provide the captured CO2  to oil companies, which use it  for enhanced oil recovery. In that process, carbon dioxide  is injected into partially depleted oil wells, and the pres￾sure from the gas pushes remaining oil to the surface.