Cement is the binding agent of the built environment. Concrete is the most used man-made material on earth, and European construction depends on a domestic industry that operates on thin margins with high energy and carbon intensity. Most of the sector's emissions come not from burning fuel but from the chemistry of clinker, the limestone-derived core of cement, which releases CO2 as it is processed. That makes cement one of the hardest sectors to decarbonise: efficiency and clean electricity cannot remove process emissions, so the transition runs through carbon capture, clinker substitution and alternative fuels. EU policy treats it accordingly: carbon pricing raises the cost of conventional production, a border adjustment shields producers from unpriced imports, and public funding underwrites the first capture projects. The open question is who pays for low-carbon cement while it costs more than conventional supply.
European cement is decarbonising by capturing the CO2 its kilns emit, and the main question is who pays for it.
Cement made this way costs more than the cement it replaces, so whether Europe gets it depends on who covers the difference.
Nothing in the last 30 days. The last change was Slite CCS to Paused on 2025-11-19.
Hover a node to light its edges and list its sources. Click one to open it. Dashed lines relieve a constraint, solid lines worsen or feed one; thicker lines carry full weight.
The carbon in imported cement is charged at €75.46 per tonne at today's carbon price, and from 2028 the certificates covering it have to be bought in the same year they are used.
CBAM extension — downstream goods and anti-circumvention · Art. 1(13), adding a subparagraph to Art. 22(2) of Regulation (EU) 2023/956 · from 2028
European cement makers lose their free allowances on a fixed schedule that reaches zero in 2038, which costs €1.36 per tonne of clinker at today's carbon price and more every year after that.
EU ETS revision · Art. 1(15)(b)(i), replacing Art. 10a(1a), second subparagraph of Directive 2003/87/EC · 2026-2038, applies from 30 September 2027
€381 million has been awarded from the Innovation Fund to European cement projects that capture their CO2.
EU ETS revision · Art. 1(17), inserting Art. 10cb of Directive 2003/87/EC · ongoing
From 2029, public buyers have to require concrete that meets the low-carbon and Union-origin rules the act sets, in the contracts the act covers.
Industrial Accelerator Act · Art. 11(2) · From 1 January 2029 (Annex II) / [6 months after entry into force] (Annex III)
Europe's oil and gas producers have to open, between them, enough permanent CO2 storage to meet the Union's target for 2030, each taking a share in proportion to what it produces.
Net-Zero Industry Act · Art. 23(1) · Contribution to be available to the market by 2030
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.
Addressed by ccs-post-combustion, ccs-oxyfuel
Nothing on the platform moves this one.
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.
Addressed by co2-transport-storage
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.
Addressed by ccs-post-combustion, ccs-oxyfuel
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.
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.
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.
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.
The pipelines, ships, terminals and permitted geological stores that a captured tonne has to reach before it counts as abated, and which no single cement plant can build for itself.
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.
What the sector makes, consumes and throws off, and the volumes anybody has published. Every edge names the document it was read from.
The calcined intermediate that carries almost all of cement's process CO2. A tonne of cement is a tonne of clinker plus additions, which is why every carbon instrument that reaches this sector is written per tonne of clinker rather than per tonne of the product sold.
What a capture plant produces and cannot sell. It is abated only once it is stored, so every tonne recorded here is a tonne owed to a transport and storage chain built by other parties on other timetables.
Every allocation that finances a project here, with the basis it was made under and how far it has got. Amounts are the published ones; an undisclosed amount is shown as undisclosed rather than as nothing. Committed money — approved, signed or disbursed — is totalled on its own; announcements and withdrawals are stated separately and never folded into it.
€421 m committed across 6 allocations, 3 of them undisclosed.
Sorted by last status change. Every change carries its source.
| Project | Company | Site | Country | Technology | Status | Public funding | Last change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Slite CCS | Heidelberg Materials | Slite | SE | ccs-post-combustion, co2-transport-storage | Paused | — | 2025-11-19 |
| Brevik CCS | Heidelberg Materials | Brevik | NO | ccs-post-combustion, co2-transport-storage | undisclosed | 2025-06-18 | |
| GO4ZERO | Holcim | Obourg | BE | ccs-oxyfuel, co2-transport-storage | In construction | undisclosed | 2024-05-16 |
| Carbon2Business | Holcim | Lägerdorf | DE | ccs-oxyfuel | In construction | undisclosed | 2024-04-22 |
| K6 | EQIOM (CRH) | Lumbres | FR | alternative-fuels, ccs-post-combustion | In construction | €40 m | 2024-02-15 |
| GeZero | Heidelberg Materials | Geseke | DE | ccs-post-combustion, co2-transport-storage | Funded | €191 m | 2023-12-15 |
| IFESTOS | TITAN Cement | Kamari | GR | ccs-post-combustion, co2-transport-storage | Announced | — | 2023-07-14 |
| ANRAV | Heidelberg Materials (Devnya Cement) | Devnya | BG | ccs-post-combustion, co2-transport-storage | Funded | €190 m | 2023-01-20 |
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