Germany aims for large-scale carbon capture projects in cement and waste by 2030 – draft strategy
FAZ / Clean Energy Wire
The German government is continuing its push for carbon capture and storage technologies with the draft of its planned Carbon Management Strategy, reported Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ). The country should have at least one large-scale carbon capture project in the cement and lime industry as well as on waste incineration in operation by 2030, said the draft seen by the newspaper.
The new strategy contains a ‘scoring’ for possible areas of application, a kind of “CCS traffic light”, writes FAZ. At the top, in dark green and therefore eligible for state support, are cement, lime and waste, with the basic chemicals industry and its steam crackers slightly below. At the yellow level are gas-fuelled direct reduction of steel, the glass industry and blue hydrogen, it writes.
The draft will now be debated among the relevant government ministries, before the cabinet can give a final green light. The government had already agreed key provisions of the strategy earlier this year, together with a draft reform to the country’s carbon storage law. It would allow the storage of CO2 under the seabed, as well as onshore – but only if the federal states choose to do so – thus ending the current ban on carbon storage.
The technologies that make carbon capture and storage (CCS) possible are supposed to help offset emissions in industries like cement production or waste incineration, where a complete avoidance of carbon emissions is technically unfeasible or extremely expensive. Many of the technologies have not yet been proven at scale. While the European Commission presented an industrial carbon management strategy in February 2024, Europe still faces significant hurdles until a well-functioning management system to store and use carbon emissions is in place, including costs to ramp up an EU-wide market and the necessary infrastructure. European countries like Norway are frontrunners, while EU member states like Germany have only begun to draft their own strategies on CCS, CCU and negative emissions.
