Belgium: Holcim kicked-off its Go4Zero project at its Obourg plant on 16 May 2024 in an event attended by the Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo and the European Commissioner for Climate Action Wopke Hoekstra. The €500m Go4Zero project, supported with €230m of funding from the European Union, will enable the integrated plant to reduce its CO2 emissions by 30% by 2027 and to produce 2Mt/yr of CO2-free cement by 2029. When fully operational, the Obourg plant will capture 1.2Mt/yr of CO2.
The Go4Zero project incorporates a number of approaches to achieve net-zero CO2 cement. The centrepiece is an oxy-fuel combustion process to generate an easy-to-handle exhaust gas with up to 80% CO2. This will be coupled to a cryogenic purification unit to generate a >99%-pure CO2 stream .The project will also make use of waste heat recovery (WHR), new exhaust filtration equipment and Europe’s largest floating solar panel farm.
