Air Liquide and Holcim have signed a new agreement to advance large-scale carbon capture at Holcim’s near-zero cement facility in Obourg, Belgium, pushing the project from concept into a more concrete delivery phase.
The deal centers on deploying industrial-grade capture technology alongside process changes at the kiln – a combination aimed at tackling the cement sector’s structurally hard-to-abate emissions.
At the core of the collaboration is an oxyfuel-ready clinker line, supplied with oxygen by Air Liquide and paired with the company’s proprietary Cryocap™ OXY capture system.
By replacing ambient air with oxygen in the combustion process, the exhaust stream becomes highly concentrated in CO2, lowering the energy penalty of capture. The captured gas is slated for transport via pipeline to a regional export hub, such as the Antwerp@C cluster in Antwerp, before shipment for permanent storage beneath the North Sea.
From pilot concepts to bankable infrastructure
The agreement marks a critical step toward turning the Obourg site into one of Europe’s first large-scale near-zero cement plants, with an annual capture capacity of around 1.1 million tons of CO2.
The project sits within Holcim’s GO4ZERO investment program, which aims to put the company on track for climate-neutral cement production in Belgium by the end of the decade, in line with the European Union’s 2050 net-zero objective.
Still, the pathway to final approval remains conditional. A final investment decision will hinge on additional partnerships across the CO2 value chain, from transport and shipping to storage access, as well as public-sector backing. Developers continue to flag the need for enabling regulation around shared CO2 infrastructure and de-risking mechanisms to unlock private capital at the scale required.
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For Air Liquide, the Obourg agreement extends its push to industrialize carbon capture technologies beyond pilot deployments.
For Holcim, it is a strategic bet that carbon capture, paired with process electrification and alternative fuels, can preserve cement production in a regulatory environment that increasingly prices unabated emissions out of the market.
Whether GO4ZERO becomes a template for European cement decarbonization will depend less on the technology and more on whether policymakers can align infrastructure planning, permitting, and long-term carbon pricing into a bankable investment case.
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