Cement producers often come under fire for their high carbon dioxide (CO2) emission profile (around 7% of total emissions per year), but they are now being positioned as valuable sources of CO2 for utilisation pathways such as the emerging e-fuels market.
Discussions at the CO2 Summit in Rotterdam last month highlighted how the sector’s process emissions could become a key feedstock for carbon capture and utilisation (CCU) applications.
One example is the Cap2U project, a joint venture between German building materials company Heidelberg Materials and industrial gas firm Linde, which is capturing CO2 from a cement plant in southern Germany for supply into merchant and utilisation markets.
The facility has a capacity of around 70,000 tonnes per year, or approximately 200 tonnes per day, equivalent to around 5 to 6% of Germany’s current CO2 market.
The project also reflects a growing need to diversify CO2 supply sources. Traditional sources such as ammonia plants are becoming less reliable due to energy market volatility and structural shifts in hydrogen production.
A source of CO2 that remains available even during summer months when demand for carbonated beverages peaks was cited as a key advantage of cement-based supply, with plants continuing to operate while other industrial sources undergo seasonal shutdowns.
A central advantage lies in the concentration of CO2 in cement plant flue gas. “In cement plants, we often see between 15% and 25% CO2 in the raw gas,” said Dr Thomas Tork, Senior Business Development Manager at Linde.
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He noted that this compares with around 5% in gas-fired power generation. “Basically, in comparison… it’s quite high compared to a lot of combustion sources.”
Higher concentrations improve capture efficiency and reduce the cost of separation, making cement an attractive source for both capture and utilisation projects.
Alongside this, a proportion of emissions from cement production is biogenic, due to the use of alternative fuels.
“Roughly 15 to 20% of that amount is biological origin, or renewable origin,” added Tork. This creates an opportunity to supply low-carbon CO2 into applications such as e-fuels and chemical production.
“If you have a larger biological content… you can utilise the biogenic CO2 out of the cement plants,” he said. “That is an opportunity also for CCU.”
Rather than deploying full-scale carbon capture and storage from the outset, projects such as Cap2U are focusing on smaller-scale, modular systems. The plant captures around 10% of the site’s total emissions, using available waste heat from the cement process to minimise additional energy demand.
“They were looking… not a full-blown solution of CCS, but starting with smaller size plants,” Tork said, describing early project approaches.
This reflects a more phased deployment strategy, where capture is aligned with local demand and infrastructure availability. In regions such as southern Germany, plant location has already been identified as a key factor in enabling smaller-scale, merchant-style CO2 supply.
Tork explained that, with the right location and the right markets, such models can be replicated more widely.
This shift is already being reflected in a growing pipeline of cement carbon capture projects. Heidelberg Materials’ Brevik facility in Norway, which began operations in 2025, is the world’s first industrial-scale CCS project in the sector and is designed to capture around 400,000 tonnes of CO2 per year, equivalent to around half of the plant’s emissions.
Larger projects are also under development, including the Slite plant in Sweden, which aims to capture up to 1.8 million tonnes annually, alongside projects in the UK, Canada and Germany.
