Risks and opportunities in the CO2 market

Carbon dioxide (CO2) supply is facing a period of growing uncertainty as traditional production sources become harder to replace, while new sources and alternative production pathways remain at varying stages of development.

For end users across food and beverage, dry ice and industrial applications, the challenge is not simply securing supply today, but understanding where reliable volumes will come from next.

Speaking to gasworld last year, CO2 consultant Bruce Woerner explained that there are very few traditional sources available to grow and replace the ones that have been lost.

“We’ve reached the point where all the good sources had already been tapped a decade or more ago.”

Since then, the wider CO2 market has continued to face questions around resilience, availability and the ability of producers to respond when individual sources are disrupted. 

gasworld Global Intelligence analysis presented at the European CO2 Summit 2026 found that confidence in Europe’s CO2 supply had fallen by 8% since October 2025, with heavy concentration of production in a small number of countries leaving the market exposed to disruption. 

While the dynamics differ between regions, the issue highlights a broader challenge facing CO2 markets. When supply is concentrated and replacement capacity is difficult to develop, disruption at individual facilities can have consequences far beyond the plant itself.

For end users, the consequences can be immediate. Food and beverage remains one of the largest areas of CO2 demand and, as gasworld Global Intelligence noted, demand from the sector can be difficult to pause. 

And CO2 shortages can create bottlenecks across food processing, beverage production and dry ice, while alternative supplies may be limited or costly.

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At the same time, the supply landscape is beginning to evolve. Carbon capture and other emerging production pathways could provide new sources of CO2, but questions remain over which technologies can deliver reliable volumes at commercial scale, how quickly they can come online and whether they can compete with established sources.

These questions will be explored in gasworld’s upcoming webinar, What If? Risks & Opportunities in the CO2 Market, bringing together perspectives from across the supply chain.

Woerner will return to examine the changing CO2 landscape alongside Stephanie Coleman, Director of Sales and Marketing at CMC Dry Ice Manufacturing; Michael Laucius, Vice President of Business Development at CarbonQuest; and Chuck Skypeck, Technical Brewing Projects Director at the Brewers Association.

Together, the panel will consider the near-term reality of CO2 supply against the longer-term opportunities emerging in the market, including which new pathways are commercially credible and where supply pinch points could emerge across , dry ice and industrial applications.

The discussion will also look at how buyers are responding to a market in which traditional assumptions about availability may no longer hold – and what end users can do now to prepare for future supply constraints.