SectorsCement and concreteWhat the European cement industry depends on

What the European cement industry depends on

Technologies, materials and constraints in one list, because a reader asking what a sector depends on is asking one question. 12 in total.

Technologies

Post-combustion carbon capture early-commercial

CO2 is separated from the kiln's flue gas after combustion, using an amine or solvent process bolted onto an existing plant, which is what makes it the retrofit route for kilns that are not being rebuilt.

Readiness: early-commercial — Brevik, the first industrial-scale capture plant in the cement industry, opened on 18 June 2025 and is capturing at full scale. One operating plant is early-commercial, not commercial. source (2025-06-18)
Abatement: 50 % of plant CO2 emissions — The Brevik installation captures half the plant's emissions; it is a single-line retrofit, not a design ceiling for the technology.
Cost: 100–300 EUR million per plant retrofit — CEMBUREAU's own estimate, read from the Internet Archive; the live page serves a self-signed certificate.
Depends on: CO2 transport and storage
Deployed by: Carbon2ProductAustria, CO2LLECT, ANRAV, Slite CCS, Carbon Hub CPT 01, Padeswood CCS, ACCSION, Brevik CCS, OLYMPUS, Broceni CCS, K6, GeZero, IFESTOS, KOdeCO net zero, CycloneCC Rudersdorf, ECCO2-LH

Oxyfuel carbon capture demonstration

The kiln is fired with oxygen rather than air, so the flue gas is concentrated CO2 and needs far less separation, at the price of rebuilding the kiln rather than bolting equipment onto it.

Readiness: demonstration — Two full-scale oxyfuel kilns are under construction in Europe — GO4ZERO at Obourg and Carbon2Business at Lägerdorf — and none is operating. Under construction is demonstration. source (2024-05-16)
Cost: 100–360 EUR million per plant — €100 million to retrofit an existing kiln, €330-360 million for a new 1 Mt/year plant — the range spans two different projects, not one uncertainty.
Depends on: CO2 transport and storage
Deployed by: Anthemis, OLYMPUS, GO4ZERO, Carbon2Business, CO2NTESSA, catch4climate

CO2 transport and storage early-commercial

The pipelines, ships, terminals and permitted geological stores that a captured tonne has to reach before it counts as abated, and which no single site that captures can build for itself.

Readiness: early-commercial — Captured CO2 from Brevik is shipped and stored under the Norwegian Longship chain, which is the first full chain in Europe to take third-party industrial CO2. One chain in service is early-commercial. source (2025-06-18)
Deployed by: ANRAV, Slite CCS, Brevik CCS, GO4ZERO, GeZero, IFESTOS

Alternative fuels in the kiln commercial

Waste-derived and biomass fuels replace coal and petcoke in the kiln, which cuts combustion emissions and nothing else — the calcination CO2 is untouched, so this route has a ceiling below half the plant's emissions.

Readiness: commercial — Substitution rates are set as ordinary operating targets in plant investment plans rather than trialled; EQIOM's Lumbres line is built around 80% substitution by 2027. source (2024-02-15)
Deployed by: K6

Direct separation carbon capture demonstration

The raw meal is calcined inside steel tubes heated from outside, so the process CO2 leaves in its own stream rather than mixed into the flue gas, and needs no solvent, no sorbent and no oxygen plant to separate it. Calix's Leilac-2 design puts four calciner tubes in one furnace chamber with a preheater string taking heat off the flue gas, and targets CO2 of better than 95 per cent purity.

Readiness: demonstration — Calix's own milestone list for Leilac-2: financial investment decision approved (2022), value engineering completed (2022), FEED study published (2023), procurement of long lead items underway (2023). One demonstration plant at 100,000 t/yr and none operating. THE PAGE CARRIES NO DATELINE, so the date is the capture that proves the text existed and is an upper bound. source (2025-02-26)
Depends on: CO2 transport and storage
Deployed by: LEILAC 2

Materials

What arrives, what leaves, and what could stand in for it. Every material is a cross-sector node, so each one opens its own page rather than a list of this sector's copy of it.

Outputs and by-products

Captured CO2waste stream5 plants
Clinkerintermediatesector-wide

Constraints

technical Process emissions from calcination

The majority of a kiln's CO2 comes out of the limestone itself when it is calcined, not out of the fuel, so no amount of fuel switching or efficiency reaches it and capture is the only route that does.

50 % of plant CO2 emissionsBrevik CCS share of the plant's emissions capturedHeidelberg Materialsprimary

Addressed by Post-combustion carbon capture, Oxyfuel carbon capture

Nothing on the platform moves this one.

infrastructure CO2 transport and storage network

A captured tonne is only abated once it is stored, and the pipelines, terminals and permitted stores that get it there are built by other parties on other timetables than the capture plant that depends on them.

50 Mt CO2 per yearUnion CO2 injection capacity objective for 2030EUR-Lex — Regulation (EU) 2024/1735 (Net-Zero Industry Act), Art. 20(1)primary

Addressed by CO2 transport and storage

relieves nzia:CO2-02×1Puts a dated, pro-rata injection-capacity duty on oil and gas entities, which is the only measure in the register that obliges anyone to build the store a capture plant needs.
relieves nzia:CO2-10×0.5Third-party access is what makes somebody else's store usable by a cement plant, but it is qualified by economic feasibility.

financial Retrofit cost against plant economics

A capture retrofit costs a large fraction of what the plant it sits on is worth, and the projects that have gone ahead in Europe have all done so with public money in the stack rather than on the plant's own cash flow.

100-300 EUR million per plantCapital cost of retrofitting post-combustion capture to an existing cement plantCEMBUREAU — Low Carbon Economy, 'Carbon sequestration and reuse' (read from the Internet Archive)estimate
100 EUR million per plantCapital cost of retrofitting oxyfuel capture to an existing cement plantCEMBUREAU — Low Carbon Economy, 'Carbon sequestration and reuse' (read from the Internet Archive)estimate
500 EUR millionGO4ZERO — total investmentHolcimprimary
191 EUR millionGeZero — EU Innovation Fund grantHeidelberg Materialsprimary
190 EUR millionANRAV — EU Innovation Fund grantHeidelberg Materialsprimary

Addressed by Post-combustion carbon capture, Oxyfuel carbon capture

worsens ets:CBAM-01×0.5The same schedule that improves the case for a retrofit raises the plant's running cost before the retrofit exists, on plants whose margins are what the retrofit has to be financed from.
relieves nzia:SP-02×0.5Strategic-project recognition shortens permitting and improves access to support, without providing capital.

political Dependence on revocable public support

Where the business case rests on a national or EU support decision, a change of position by the funder stops the project outright, and it stops it after the engineering is done rather than before it starts.

Not quantified yet.

Nothing on the platform moves this one.

market Green premium against willingness to pay

Captured-carbon cement costs more to make than the cement it replaces, and the buyer of the concrete is usually not the party that carries the climate commitment, so the premium has to be pulled through the chain by procurement rules rather than by demand.

75-150 % above a conventional plantProduction cost premium of near-zero emissions cement using CCSInternational Energy Agency — Breakthrough Agenda Report 2025estimate

relieves ets:CBAM-01×1Withdrawing free allocation raises the cost of unabated clinker, which narrows the gap the low-carbon product has to close.
relieves iaa:LM-03a×1Procurement rules pull low-carbon concrete through public demand rather than leaving it to willingness to pay.
relieves iaa:LM-06a×0.5Support schemes carry the same requirements, widening the pull beyond procurement.
relieves cbam:FIN-03×0.5Same-year certificates stop importers hedging the carbon cost forward, holding imported and domestic carbon costs closer together.