The European Commission has announced the launch of its strategy to significantly increase industrial carbon capture, storage and use capacity across the EU over the coming years, forming a key part of its plan to achieve its climate objectives, including achieving emissions net zero by 2050.
The new strategy was launched alongside the Commission's recommendation on Tuesday to set a 2040 target for the EU to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions by 90% by 2040, on the path to carbon neutrality by 2050. Although the Commission has noted that its climate ambitions focus primarily on absolute emissions reductions, achieving its targets will require large increases in the capacity to capture, store and use CO2, especially to tackle emissions from difficult-to-reduce industrial processes. decarbonize and sectors such as transport and agriculture.
Specifically, the Commission has proposed developing at least 50 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) of CO2 storage capacity by 2030, with the new strategic communication indicating that this capacity will need to massively increase to 280 mtpa by 2040, and again to 450 million tons per year. tons by 2050.
Industrial carbon management encompasses capturing the combustion of fossil fuels, industrial processes, biogenic emissions or directly from the air. The Commission's strategy focuses on the development of these technologies, as well as the regulatory and investment framework to support them.
The new strategy focuses on three main technology pathways, including CO2 capture for storage (CCS), CO2 capture for use (CCU) as a replacement for fossil carbon in synthetics, chemicals or fuels, and carbon removal biogenic or atmospheric CO2 from the atmosphere for permanent storage.
The communication also highlights the need to establish CO2 transport infrastructure as an essential enabler of each of these technologies, with an estimated 7,300 km of infrastructure and more than 12 billion euros of investment required by 2030, increasing to 19,000 km and 16 billion euros in 2040.
The Commission's strategy also envisages three main phases of industrial carbon management over the coming decades, starting with the deployment of at least 50 mtpa of storage capacity by 2030, along with related infrastructure of pipelines, ships, railways and roads, achieving economic viability for most regional carbon value chains. , with CO2 becoming a tradable product for storage or use in the EU single market and up to a third of captured CO2 used by 2040, and in the final phase after 2040, industrial carbon management becoming an integral part of EU economic system, and carbon removed from the atmosphere making it the main source of carbon-based industrial processes or transport fuels.
Additional aspects of the Commission's strategy to enable investment and policies to support the development of CCS, CCU and carbon removal capacity include plans to develop a platform that matches CO2 suppliers with storage operators, including the creation of an “investment atlas of potential local CO2 storage”, the development of policies to adopt the use of carbon as an industrial resource and to support mechanisms for industrial carbon removals, including whether and how to account for these actions in the EU Emissions Trading System EU (ETS).
Maroš Šefčovič, Executive Vice-President of the European Green Deal, Interinstitutional Relations and Foresight, said:
“European industry is working hard to reduce its emissions, but there are certain sectors where processes are particularly difficult to adapt and changes are expensive to implement. For this reason, we need to drive innovation in carbon capture, transport and storage technologies to make them an effective climate solution. Accelerating its deployment would help us meet our climate ambitions while increasing the competitiveness of our industry, especially in times of significant geopolitical change. In this context, we are also intensifying our engagement with the main industrial sectors, but also with citizens, to ensure that the transition is made in a socially fair way.”
