Heidelberg Materials secures EU funding for CCUS projects

Heidelberg Materials has been awarded EU Innovation Fund grants for four decarbonisation projects. The selected projects are Anthemis in Belgium, AirvaultGOCO₂ in France, DREAM in Italy, and HuCCSar in Poland.

Dr Dominik von Achten, Chairman of the Managing Board of Heidelberg Materials, proclaimed the grants as a great day for the company and European cement decarbonisation. “The support from the Innovation Fund is a strong vote of confidence for our approach and our projects. Today's milestone confirms that we are on the right track with the next chapters of our journey - building on the successful launch of our Brevik CCS project and the recent Final Investment Decision (FID) for Padeswood CCS,” he said.

The Innovation Fund's Net-Zero Technologies Call supports decarbonisation projects of varying scale. Selected projects were assessed in terms of their potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, their degree of innovation, project maturity, replicability, and cost efficiency.

As a partner in the Anthemis project, Heidelberg Materials plans to equip its Antoing clinker plant with an innovative oxyfuel carbon capture unit. Once operational, the unit will capture over 95 per cent of the site's emissions - equivalent to more than 800,000tof CO₂ annually. In addition, Heidelberg Materials is establishing collaborations with several partners to ensure the transport and permanent storage of CO₂, with the ambition of building a full value chain and positioning the Antoing site as a key catalyst in this process.

AirvaultGOCO₂ will be implemented at the company’s Airvault cement plant in the French New Aquitaine Region. With a planned capture capacity of nearly 1Mta of CO₂, AirvaultGOCO₂ is part of the broader GOCO₂ initiative to decarbonise the west of France. This investment programme aims to capture CO₂ at industrial sites and transport it to geological storage locations for permanent storage. The emissions, including the CO₂ captured in Airvault, are to be transported by pipeline to the coastal town of Saint-Nazaire and then by ship to storage wells under the North Sea.

The DREAM CCS project at Heidelberg Materials' Italian Rezzato Mazzano cement plant in Brescia. DREAM represents the first full-chain, full-scale CCS (Carbon Capture and Storage) project in the Italian cement sector and involves the installation of a highly innovative hybrid carbon capture system. As part of this initiative, CO₂ will be captured from cement production and transported to the Ravenna CCS storage hub beneath the Adriatic Sea, aiming  to capture around 1Mta of CO₂ and enabling the large-scale production of carbon captured cements for the Italian market.

In Poland, the HuCCSar project will see Heidelberg Materials validate the CO₂ storage potential in Central Poland to develop and implement the country's first onshore CCS value chain. The project also includes activities to promote social acceptance of onshore CO₂ storage in the region, paving the way for full-scale CCS deployment in Poland.