Displaying items by tag: CCS

UK: Holcim UK has welcomed a €33.1m investment by the National Wealth Fund into the Peak Cluster carbon capture and storage (CCS) project, which will decarbonise 40% of the UK’s cement and lime production and support over 2000 existing jobs, as well as creating new ones. Led by Progressive Energy, Peak Cluster is a partnership between Holcim UK, Breedon, Tarmac and Sigma Roc involving cement and lime plants in Derbyshire and Staffordshire, including Holcim UK’s 1Mt/yr Cauldon plant. The project aims to reduce annual carbon emissions from its partners by 3Mt/yr from 2032 (25% of annual CO₂ output for the area), by capturing CO₂ from the plants and transporting it by pipeline to Morecambe Net Zero's disused gas fields under the East Irish Sea.

The investment will fund front-end engineering and design (FEED) and other studies to support a final investment decision in 2028. Holcim UK CEO Lee Sleight said that CCS is ‘essential’ to decarbonise cement manufacturing and achieve net zero by 2050.

Peak Cluster CEO John Egan said it will create a ‘backbone of industrial opportunity’ across northern England.

Norway: Heidelberg Materials CEO Dominik von Achten and Crown Prince Haakon of Norway have inaugurated the new carbon capture and storage (CCS) unit at the Brevik cement plant. The event was attended by 320 guests, inxluding Norwegian energy minister Terje Aasland. Von Achten said the producer’s ‘zero-CO₂’ cement, evoZero, is fully sold out for 2025. The Brevik CCS unit will capture 400,000t/yr of CO₂, equivalent to 50% of the plant's emissions. The first CO₂ has already been successfully captured, liquefied and temporarily stored, with injection into subsea reservoirs scheduled for August 2025. 

Von Achten said “Personally, I love the collaboration part of it because this is a masterpiece of global, national, European, in fact, global collaboration. Without the Norwegian government support we would probably not alone have a part in this project. The Norwegian government has significantly de-risked the project for us. That's why we are standing here today and celebrating this important milestone.”

He added “We can’t expect governments to finance these projects for the coming decades – it must work commercially. We have a physical product from Brevik that we will be delivering to Oslo and to other parts of Norway. We also have a virtual product, which will be like a purchase of a renewable energy contract, so that we can virtually allocate evoZero to Paris, to Berlin, to wherever it is needed.”

Von Achten said “The CO₂ concentration in our flue gas – at 20% – is much higher than in the atmosphere, so we have a huge technology and commercial advantage over direct air capture (DAC) approaches. I would say that our evoZero product brings significant commercial advantages to our customers.”

Yara International CEO Svein Tore Holsether said “There will be no green transition with red numbers.”

Energy minister Terje Aasland said Norway has been safely sequestering CO₂ in the Sleipner oil-field since 1996 and that storage is safe and permanent.

Latvia: Schwenk Latvija has captured the first CO₂ at its Brocēni cement plant using a pilot-scale carbon capture unit supplied by Norway-based Capsol Technologies. The CapsolGo unit will run in test mode until the end of 2025, capturing 2t/day of CO₂. The producer plans to make a final investment decision in 2027 on a potential full-scale carbon capture plant capable of capturing 800,000t/yr of CO₂. If this project goes ahead, then commissioning is expected in around 2030.

Chair of the board of Schwenk Latvija and managing director of Schwenk Northern Europe Reinhold Schneider said “We at Schwenk have come a long way through extensive analysis, studies, research and development processes and impact assessments to reach the point of the first CO₂ captured. Schwenk is strongly committed to launching a full-scale carbon capture plant in Brocēni by 2030. This test phase brings us one step closer to that.”

Global: Cumulative investment in carbon capture and storage (CCS) will reach US$80bn over the next five years, according to risk management company DNV’s new Energy Transition Outlook: CCS to 2050 report. DNV forecasts that CCS capacity will quadruple by 2030, driven initially by pilot projects in North America and Europe, but now seeing a sharp increase in capacity. As the technologies mature and scale, DNV expects that the average costs will drop by an average of 40% by 2050. The report also states that CCS will grow from 41Mt CO₂/yr captured and stored today to 1.3Bnt CO₂/yr in 2050.

CEO of energy systems at DNV Ditlev Engel said “Carbon capture and storage technologies are a necessity for ensuring that CO₂ emitted by fossil-fuel combustion is stopped from reaching the atmosphere and for keeping the goals of the Paris Agreement alive. DNV’s first Energy Transition Outlook: CCS to 2050 report clearly shows that we are at a turning point in the development of this crucial technology.”

Netherlands: Dutch construction firm Hakkers and startup Paebbl have launched their first joint project at the Port of Rotterdam. The project aims to reduce the environmental impact of maritime anchoring by replacing 15% of traditional cement in the anchoring mix with Paebbl’s carbon-storing material. The substitution stores captured CO₂ into a stable mineral form, sequestering 110kg of CO₂ per tonne of material, for a total of 500kg in this application. Hakkers uses around 5000t/yr of cement for anchoring in civil engineering projects. Paebbl’s material aims to reduce emissions from these projects while maintaining performance.

Commercial manager at Hakkers Jeroen Kuup said “We’re always on the lookout for innovative ways to minimise our carbon footprint at industrial scale. Traditional anchoring systems rely heavily on cement, which generates considerable CO₂ emissions. Partnering with Paebbl on these maritime infrastructures allows us to explore a more sustainable approach without compromising on the scale, reliability and performance that our clients expect.”

Greece: Titan Greece has obtained Enterprise Greece’s strategic investment status for its upcoming 1.9Mt/yr-capacity IFESTOS carbon capture project at the Kamari cement plant in Boeotia. The status also extends to an upcoming Business Park adjacent to the plant. The IFESTOS project is currently at the stage of basic design and environmental studies, with a final investment decision due in 2026. An anticipated 750 direct and indirect jobs will result from the construction and operation of the carbon capture unit.

Titan Cement Group’s Europe regional executive director Yanni Paniaras said "IFESTOS’ inclusion underlines the importance of the project for Greece. Preparation continues apace.”

A week ago, there were two fully-financed cement plant carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) projects underway in the US.¹ Now, there aren’t.

Projects to decarbonise National Cement Company’s Lebec, California, plant and Heidelberg Materials North America’s Mitchell, Indiana, plant were each set to receive up to US$500m in US Department of Energy (DoE) funding on a one-for-one basis with private investments. The projects were to include eventual 950,000t/yr (Lebec) and 2Mt/yr (Mitchell) carbon capture installations. Additionally, the Lebec plant was to transition to limestone calcined clay cement (LC3) production and the use of alternative fuels (AF), including pistachio shells. Both were beneficiaries of the DoE’s US$6bn Industrial Demonstrations Program (IDP), touted by former US Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm as ‘Spurring on the next generation of decarbonisation technologies in key industries [to] keep America the most competitive nation on Earth.’ Disbursement of funding under the programme was frozen by executive order of President Trump in January 2025.^{2, 3}

On 30 May 2025, Trump’s Secretary of Energy announced that the government in which Granholm served had approved spending on industrial decarbonisation without a ‘thorough financial review.’ He cancelled remaining project funding in signature Trumpian style, in list form.⁴ Among 24 de-funded projects, Lebec and Mitchell accounted for US$1bn (27%) of a total US$3.73bn in allocated funds that have now been withdrawn.

It's hard not to feel sorry for the management of the Lebec and Mitchell plant and the teams that had been working to deliver these projects. Heidelberg Materials has yet to comment, though CEO Dominik von Achten was in North America in late May 2025. National Cement Company parent Vicat, meanwhile, conceded the setback with a strong statement of its commitment to CO₂ reduction, to 497kg/t of cementitious product globally.⁵ There was a diplomatic edge to the statement too, however. Echoing the Secretary of Energy, Vicat said that its target remains ‘solely based on existing proven technologies, including energy efficiency, AF substitution and clinker rate reduction’ – as opposed to ‘any technological breakthroughs’ like carbon capture. There are currently no public details of possible back-up financing arrangements for these projects; for now, the best guess at their status is ‘uncertain.’

Alongside these group’s local subsidiaries, another organisation that has to do business daily with the DoE is the American Cement Association (ACA). President and CEO Mike Ireland has continually acknowledged the complex needs of the government, while stating the association’s case for keeping support in place. With regard to these funding cuts, Ireland’s emphasis fell on the latter side: “Today’s announcement is candidly a missed opportunity for both America’s cement manufacturers and this administration, as CCS projects have long been supported by bipartisan members in Congress and bipartisan administrations.”⁶ He reasserted the ACA’s understanding that carbon capture aligns with the administration’s strategy to bolster domestic manufacturing and innovation.

The early 2020s heyday of US carbon capture was founded on gradual, consensus-based politics – unlike its demise. Table 1 (below) gives a non-exhaustive account of recent and on-going front-end engineering design (FEED) studies and the funding they received:

Additionally, MTR Carbon Capture, which is executing a carbon capture pilot at St Marys Cement’s Charlevoix plant in Michigan, previously received US$1.5m in Fossil Energy Research and Development funding towards a total US$3.7m for an unspecified cement plant carbon capture study.¹⁰

Market researcher Greenlight Insights valued industrial decarbonisation initiatives under the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (ODEC – the now defunct DoE office responsible, among other things, for the IDP) at US$65.9bn in cumulative returns in April 2025.¹¹ The government has yet to publish any account of how it might replace this growth, or the 291,000 anticipated new jobs that would have come with it. Given all this (along with the extensive financial and technical submissions that accompanied each project), the issues raised by the DoE are presumably budgetary, or else founded in a perception of CCUS as essentially uneconomical.

Carbon capture is very, very expensive. A fatuous reply is that so is climate change, just with a few more ‘verys.’ Hurricane Ian in September 2022 cost US$120bn, more than enough to fund carbon capture installations at all 91 US cement plants, along the lines of the former Lebac and Mitchell agreements.¹² Unlike climate change, however, carbon capture remains unproven. Advocates need to continually justify taxpayer involvement in such a high-risk venture.

At its Redding cement plant in California, Lehigh Hanson successfully delivered a funding-free FEED study, with its partner Fortera raising US$85m in a Series C funding. This presents an alternative vision of innovation as fully-privatised, in which the government might still have the role of shaping demand. This is borne out in the IMPACT Act, a bill which ‘sailed through’ the lower legislature in March 2025.¹³ If enacted, it will empower state and municipal transport departments to pledge to buy future outputs of nascent reduced-CO₂ cements and concretes.

A separate aspect of the funding cancellation that appears decidedly cruel is the targeted removal of grants to start-ups. Two alternative building materials developers – Brimstone and Sublime Systems – were listed for a combined US$276m of now vapourised liquidity. Both are commercially viable without the funding, but the effect of this reversal – including on the next generation of US innovators who hoped to follow in their footsteps – can only be chilling. As non-governmental organisation Industrious Labs said of the anticipated closure of the ODEC in April 2025: “We may see companies based in other geographies start to pull ahead.”

Heidelberg Materials’s Brevik carbon capture plant came online in June 2025, 54 months after the producer secured approval for the project. The term of a presidency is 48 months. This probably means that producers in the US will no longer see CCUS as a viable investment, even under sympathetic administrations.

Even as government funding for CCS flickers from ‘dormant’ to ‘extinct,’ the sun is rising on other US projects. Monarch Cement Company commissioned a 20MW solar power plant at its Humboldt cement plant in Kansas on 27 May 2025. The global momentum is behind decarbonisation, even if economics determines that it will only take the form of smaller-scale mitigation measures at US cement plants into the medium-term future. We can hope that these, at least, might include the AF and LC3 aspects of National Cement Company’s plans at Lebec.

References

1. Clean Air Task Force, ‘Global Carbon Capture Activity and Project Map,’ accessed 3 June 2025, www.catf.us/ccsmapglobal/

2. Democrats Appropriations, ‘Issue 5: Freezing the Industrial Demonstrations Program Undermines U.S. Manufacturing Competitiveness and Strands Private Investment,’ January 2025, www.democrats-appropriations.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/democrats-appropriations.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/5%20DOE%20Frozen%20Funding%20-%20Industrial%20Demos.pdf

3. Colorado Attorney General, ‘Attorney General Phil Weiser secures court order blocking Trump administration’s illegal federal funding freeze,’ 6 March 2025, www.coag.gov/press-releases/weiser-court-order-trump-federal-funding-freeze-3-6-25/

4. US Department of Energy, ‘Secretary Wright Announces Termination of 24 Projects, Generating Over $3 Billion in Taxpayer Savings,’ 30 May 2025, www.energy.gov/articles/secretary-wright-announces-termination-24-projects-generating-over-3-billion-taxpayer

5. Vicat, ‘Cancellation of funding agreement for the Lebec Net Zero project by the US Department of Energy,’ 3 June 2025, www.vicat.com/news/cancellation-funding-agreement-lebec-net-zero-project-us-department-energy

6. American Cement Association, ‘Statement from the American Cement Association on Department of Energy’s Cancellation of Clean Energy Grants,’ 30 May 2025, www.cement.org/2025/05/30/statement-from-the-american-cement-association-on-department-of-energys-cancellation-of-clean-energy-grants/

7. Gov Tribe, ‘Cooperative Agreement DEFE0031942,’ 30 September 2022, www.govtribe.com/award/federal-grant-award/cooperative-agreement-defe0031942

8. Higher Gov, ‘DECD0000010 Cooperative Agreement,’ 13 May 2024, www.highergov.com/grant/DECD0000010/

9. Gov Tribe, ‘Cooperative Agreement DEFE0032222,’ 7 February 2025, www.govtribe.com/award/federal-grant-award/cooperative-agreement-defe0032222

10. Higher Gov, ‘DEFE0031949 Cooperative Agreement,’ 1 May 2023, www.highergov.com/grant/DEFE0031949/

11. Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, ‘Jobs, Economic Impact of OCED Closure,’ 11 April 2025, www.c2es.org/press-release/oced-closure-could-cost-65-billion-290000-jobs/

12. National Centers for Environmental Information, ‘Events,’ accessed 4 June 2025, www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/billions/events/US/2022?disasters%5B%5D=tropical-cyclone

13. US Congress, ‘H.R.1534 - IMPACT Act,’ 26 March 2025, www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/1534

Europe: Heidelberg Materials and environment consultancy Arup have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to collaborate on decarbonisation of the built environment through carbon capture and storage-enabled cement and concrete.

The partners will conduct joint research and technical analysis on the deployment of CCS technologies across cement and concrete production. Heidelberg Materials and Arup previously began collaborating in November 2024 to assess the benefits and feasibility of carbon-captured cement and concrete.

US: The US Department of Energy may end the Industrial Demonstrations Program that aims to decarbonise hard-to-abate industries like cement, placing up to US$6bn in federal grants at risk, according to Canary Media. This includes an eventual US$500m in Heidelberg Materials North America’s Mitchell cement plant carbon capture project in Indiana. The project is reportedly at risk after 'significant' staff cuts at the Department of Energy.

The senior vice president of sustainability and public affairs for Heidelberg Materials North America, David Perkins, said that the company was ‘uncertain’ and that ‘coordination and communications [had] changed’. He added that the company is still submitting reports for the grant to the Department of Energy and exploring alternative funding sources.

Germany: Heidelberg Materials increased its revenue by 5% year-on-year to €4.71bn in the first quarter of 2025. Operating earnings from current operations rose slightly to €235m from €232m in the previous year.

“Despite the political and economic uncertainties as well as difficult weather conditions in some regions, we got off to a very good start to the 2025 financial year,” chair Dominik von Achten said. “In particular, we benefitted from significant growth in the Africa-Mediterranean-Western Asia group area.”

He added “In the first three months of 2025, we continued to set the course for our sustainable transformation. Final preparations for our CCS lighthouse project in Brevik, Norway, are currently well underway. We started capturing, liquefying and temporarily storing CO₂ a few days ago as part of the plant's ramp-up. We look forward to the grand opening of the world's first large-scale industrial carbon capture facility at a cement plant in June.”

The company confirmed its outlook for the 2025 financial year. It expects full-year earnings of €3.25bn – €3.55bn.