The Carbon Capture Update: CCUS Projects Gain Momentum in the Cement Industry

BTU Analytics – a FactSet Company is happy to release our latest Energy Market Insight Series: The Carbon Capture Update. Released monthly, the Carbon Capture Update provides updates on major global carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) projects as we track their development in our latest Energy Transition offering: the CCUS Projects Table. This table is updated weekly and only accessible to FactSet clients on the Workstation. If you are interested in this database, please email btuanalytics@factset.com with your name, company info, and the subject as “CCS Database.”

In the Carbon Capture Update, we will also briefly analyze emerging themes in carbon management. This month, we spotlight growing momentum for CCUS applications in the cement industry.

• Occidental Petroleum subsidiary 1PointFive has begun FEED for a Corpus Christi area Direct Air Capture (DAC) facility. An application for tax exemption suggests that the facility could eventually remove up to 5 Mt/y, which would make it one of the largest carbon capture projects in the world and more than 1000X larger than the largest currently operational DAC facility. Occidental recently entered an agreement with Enbridge to cooperate in developing CO2 transportation and storage infrastructure near Corpus Christi.
• ExxonMobil’s Baytown hydrogen facility, another Gulf Coast mega-project, has also entered FEED. The plant will use CCUS to produce low-carbon blue hydrogen, which will fuel onsite petrochemical facilities and be sold on the merchant market.
• Beach Energy and Santos have begun construction on the Moomba installation in Australia. In many production basins, the natural gas processing industry already treats gas to remove naturally occurring CO2, making this industry an especially economic point-source for CCUS. With a capital cost of just $165 million USD and a capacity of 1.7 Mt/y, Santos estimates the project will capture CO2 at a cost below $24/t. Similar projects at gas processing sites have also progressed, including the Arthit project in Thailand having advanced to FEED and a new project announcement on the coast of Libya.

Spotlight: Three New Major Projects Announced at Cement Plants

Of the six major new projects to be announced in 2023 so far, three are capturing emissions from cement plants. The Anthemis project, the largest new project to be announced in 2023, will capture 0.8 Mt/y from a Heidelberg cement factory in Belgium. The cement and lime industry is responsible for as much as 7% of global greenhouse gas emissions and is frequently noted as a “hard-to-abate” sector. The high heat required for production kilns, as well as the process emissions inherent in the calcination of lime, makes it difficult for this industry to lower emissions through electrification or other strategies. CCUS has been widely considered as the most realistic pathway for decarbonization of cement and lime production, yet the announcement of specific large projects appears to have only recently gained momentum. The Anthemis project, along with an expansion to Rohrdorfer’s Andritz project and CEMEX’s project in Spain, makes twelve commercial-scale CCUS projects in the cement and lime industry that have been announced in the past year. Combined, these twelve projects represent 11 Mt/y of CO2 capture capacity, doubling of the total capacity in development for the industry.

To date, most announced projects have been in Europe, led especially by European cement giants Holcim and Heidelberg. Holcim and Heidelberg are also planning several North American projects. Despite most projects being helmed by a small group of firms, these projects are diverse in terms of technology and design. Holcim, Heidelberg, and others are exploring a range of potential carbon capture approaches, including pre-combustion, post-combustion, and oxyfuel. Grant funding from the EU Innovation Fund and U.S. DOE have helped spur research for these applications in Europe and North America. Only a handful of commercial-scale projects are known to be in development outside of these regions.

The Heidelberg Brevik plant in Norway, the most advanced project with a capture capacity greater than 100,000 t/y, is currently under construction and expected to enter service in 2024, almost 10 years after the project began initial phases. Following this precedent, it could be a long road ahead for similar recently announced projects. However, the successful completion of the Brevik plant and other projects could encourage further investment in CCUS for the cement industry.

BTU Analytics is a FactSet Company. This article was originally published on the BTU Analytics website.

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