Geological Carbon Storage Patents: Leaders, Trends & White Space 2026
- A single leader holds 7 records while fifth place sits at just 2 — a steep drop-off rather than an even spread across the ranked assignees.
- Filings peaked in 2017 at 4 and the last complete year, 2024, sits at 1 — down 50% from 2021's 2, a real pullback rather than a data artefact.
- Steam and thermal power plant claims (F01K) lead the IPC mix at 30.4% ahead of material analysis and testing (G01N) at 26.1%, showing the field leans toward integration with power generation rather than storage science alone.
Filing growth compares 2021 (2 records) with 2024 (1) — a three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year we treat as complete: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in and any growth rate that ends there would understate the field.
What this landscape covers
This review covers 23 published records matching geological carbon storage terms — geologic CO2 storage, subsurface carbon storage, storage reservoir integrity and related capture and conversion language — filed or published between 2015 and the 2026-08-31 data cut-off. Filings run through receiving offices in the United States, WIPO/PCT and Canada, with the United States accounting for the large majority of the corpus.
Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the most recent one or two years in any trend understate true filing activity; 2024 is treated here as the last complete year for growth comparisons.
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 23-record corpus: how filing activity has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses the claims actually sit in.
A 2017 peak followed by a real pullback
Filings rose to 4 in 2017, the peak so far, then softened. Using 2021 (2) to 2024 (1) — the last complete year — filing activity fell 50% over that span. Readings for 2025 and beyond will keep rising as publications catch up, but the 2021-to-2024 comparison is the one that reflects actual filer behaviour.
Power-integration classes outweigh pure storage science
F01K (steam and thermal power plants) covers 30.4% of the 23 records, and F03G (motors, including energy-storage mechanisms) covers 21.7% — both ahead of E21B (drilling/wells) and F24T (geothermal) at 17.4% each. That pattern points to a corpus weighted toward coupling storage with power generation and heat recovery, not toward wellbore or reservoir engineering on its own.
Shares are the percentage of the 23 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Geological Carbon Storage Patent Landscape with Eureka
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Try EurekaA representative recent filing
System and method for increasing a storage capacity of an underground storage reservoir using an electrical submersible pump
A system and method for increasing a storage capacity of a first underground storage reservoir includes a first well having perforations within the first underground storage reservoir, a second well having first perforations within the first underground storage reservoir and second perforations within a second underground storage reservoir, and an electrical submersible pump. The first well is configured to inject a gas, liquefied gas or supercritical fluid into the first underground storage reservoir. The electrical submersible pump is located within the second well and increases the storage capacity of the first underground storage reservoir by transferring a fluid from the first underground storage reservoir.Filed by Texas Tech University System — one of the ranked assignees in this corpus.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20170341942A1 | Methods and systems for large scale carbon dioxide utilization from lake KIVU via a co2 industrial utilizatio… | 208 |
| 2 | US20100299125A1 | Porous medium exploitation method using fluid flow modelling | 62 |
| 3 | US20210372668A1 | Multi-fluid, earth battery energy systems and methods | 44 |
| 4 | US10577248B2 | Methods and systems for large scale carbon dioxide utilization from Lake Kivu via a CO<sub>2 </sub>industrial… | 32 |
| 5 | US20170299226A1 | Multi-fluid renewable geo-energy systems and methods | 21 |
| 6 | US20150000374A1 | Process-based approach for the detection of co2 injectate leakage | 20 |
| 7 | US8390813B2 | Apparatus and method for monitoring of gas having stable isotopes | 9 |
| 8 | US10995972B2 | Multi-fluid renewable geo-energy systems and methods | 4 |
| 9 | US20090273781A1 | Apparatus and method for monitoring of gas having stable isotopes | 4 |
| 10 | US20240295367A1 | Multi-fluid, earth battery energy systems and methods | 3 |
Citation counts favour older records simply because they have had longer to accumulate citations inside the searched corpus — read them as a signal of influence, not of current relevance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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One assignee well ahead of a thin field
The leading assignee holds 7 records against 2 for fifth place among the 9 ranked assignees. That gap suggests one organisation has built a real portfolio here while most others hold a handful of filings each — worth checking directly before assuming any of the smaller holders has broad coverage.
A cooling filing pace, not a stalled one
Filings dropped from 2 in 2021 to 1 in 2024, the last complete year in the trend. That is a real pullback in a small corpus, but with only single-digit annual counts, a handful of new applications could reverse the direction quickly once 2025–2026 publications finish landing.
Storage is being claimed alongside power generation
Steam and thermal power plant classification (F01K) covers the largest share of records, ahead of material analysis (G01N) and motor/energy-storage mechanisms (F03G). Filers are more often claiming storage as part of an integrated power or energy system than as a standalone reservoir-engineering invention.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to geological carbon storage patent landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
The ranked assignees and where they are not yet claiming
Nine assignees make up the entire ranking returned for this dataset — not a top-50 or top-100 cut, but the whole list the data endpoint returns for this search.
A single organisation with the deepest portfolio
The leading assignee's 7 records sit well above the rest of the ranking, built across a mix of national-lab and university filings rather than a single industrial player. That concentration matters for anyone assessing freedom to operate around large-scale CO2 storage integration.
A long, thin tail below the leader
From second place down, holdings thin out quickly to single digits, with several university and national-security-lab assignees holding just one or two records each. This is a field where most participants are testing single inventions rather than building portfolios.
Several established filers have gone quiet
Two of the ranked assignees show a -100% year-on-year change with 0 filings in the latest year, matching the corpus-wide pullback from 2021 to 2024. Whether that reflects a genuine pause or simply publication lag will only be clear once 2025–2026 records finish publishing.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC | 0 | — |
| Board of Regents of The University of Texas System | 0 | -100% |
| Triad National Security, LLC | 0 | — |
| Texas Tech University System | 0 | -100% |
| IFP Energies Nouvelles | 0 | — |
| HARPER BIOTECH LLC D B A SIMBUKA ENERGY | 0 | — |
| University of Melbourne | 0 | — |
| UTI Limited Partnership | 0 | -100% |
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to a concentrated leader, a cooling filing pace through the last complete year, and several specific under-claimed branches. Turning that into a filing or freedom-to-operate decision means going deeper on the individual records.
Check the leader's actual claim scope
A 7-record lead is only useful information once you know what those claims actually cover — pull the independent claims rather than relying on the count alone.
Explore assignee portfolios in Eureka →Map the white-space chips against your own roadmap
Sorbent regeneration cycling and storage-integrity monitoring show thin coverage in this corpus; confirm that against your own technical roadmap before assuming the space is open.
Run a white-space search in Eureka →Common questions about geological carbon storage patents
Within this dataset, one assignee holds 7 records, well ahead of the rest of the 9-assignee ranking, where fifth place holds just 2. The holders are a mix of US national laboratories and university systems rather than a single dominant industrial filer. Anyone assessing the competitive field should look at the actual claim scope of the leader's portfolio rather than assume the count alone signals broad coverage, since a handful of related continuations can inflate a single organisation's record count.
Filings peaked at 4 in 2017 and have since cooled; comparing 2021 (2) to 2024 (1), the last complete year in the trend, activity fell 50%. Counts for 2025 and 2026 will rise as publications catch up, because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, so it is too early to call the most recent years a continuation of the decline. The safest read is that filing pace has softened from its 2017 peak, not that the technology area is being abandoned.
Steam and thermal power plant classification (F01K) covers the largest share at 30.4% of the 23 records in scope, followed by material analysis and testing (G01N) at 26.1% and motor/energy-storage mechanisms (F03G) at 21.7%. Drilling and wells (E21B), geothermal systems (F24T) and heat-exchange apparatus (F28D) each cover 17.4%. Because records can carry multiple IPC classes, these figures describe overlapping claim emphasis rather than mutually exclusive categories, and they suggest storage claims are frequently tied to power or heat-recovery systems rather than filed as standalone reservoir engineering.
Relative to the dense claiming around power integration and reservoir mechanics, this corpus shows thinner coverage around sorbent regeneration cycling at reservoir scale, storage-integrity monitoring using distributed sensing, and CO2 stream conditioning immediately ahead of injection. These are not confirmed gaps — they reflect what this particular search string surfaces — but they are reasonable starting points for a deeper freedom-to-operate or novelty search before committing R&D budget. A first claim in any of these branches should be checked against the broader B01D and C01B literature outside this narrow search scope as well.
WO2025151462A1, filed by Texas Tech University System and published 2025-07-17, claims a system using a first well to inject gas, liquefied gas or supercritical fluid into a first underground storage reservoir, plus a second well with an electrical submersible pump that transfers fluid between two storage reservoirs to increase the first reservoir's storage capacity. The core inventive element is the pump-driven fluid transfer between two connected reservoirs specifically to raise usable storage capacity, not injection itself. Anyone designing a multi-reservoir storage system with pump-assisted capacity management should review this filing's claim language directly before finalizing a competing design.
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Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company’s registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.