Decarbonising Energy Intensive Industries: The Role of CCUS in Europe’s Industrial Transition

Europe’s energy intensive industries are expected to deliver rapid emissions reductions at a time of unprecedented competitive pressure. Structurally high energy prices, rising carbon costs and increasing regulatory complexity are eroding Europe’s industrial base, while imports from regions with lower climate constraints continue to grow. For hard to-abate sectors such as cement, this combination risks not only delaying the transition, but displacing production, and emissions, outside the European Union.

Cement illustrates this challenge clearly.

As a fully local industry, with more than 200 plants across the EU supplying the construction value chain that underpins housing, infrastructure, energy systems, the digital economy and defence needs, cement is both essential to Europe’s strategic autonomy and highly exposed to carbon leakage.

Around two-thirds of the sector’s emissions are process-related, arising from the chemical transformation of limestone, and therefore cannot be eliminated through energy switching alone. Ensuring that such industries can decarbonise while remaining viable in Europe is therefore a prerequisite for delivering the EU’s climate objectives.

The European cement industry is investing and moving from ambition to deployment. However, for sectors generating unavoidable process emissions, carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) is required to complete the transition, provided it is embedded within a coherent industrial framework that aligns decarbonisation with competitiveness.

From ambition to deployment: integrating CCUS into an industrial transition

In 2020, the European cement industry published its first roadmap to climate neutrality. Five years on, supported by significant investments and technological progress, the sector has strengthened its ambition and is moving decisively into implementation. The updated Net Zero Roadmap (published in 2024) now foresees a 37% reduction in CO₂ emissions on cement by 2030, 78% by 2040, and net-zero emissions on cement by 2050, with the potential to become carbon-negative across the value chain.

These reductions are already being delivered through extensive deployment of energy efficiency, fossil fuel replacement through increased use of alternative fuels, clinker substitution, circularity, and the progressive role of concrete carbonation in the built environment. Together, these measures significantly reduce emissions well before capture technologies are applied.

However, after all available abatement options are deployed, a substantial share of emissions remains structural. According to the sector’s Net Zero Roadmap, around 43% of cement emissions must be addressed through capture, use or permanent storage to achieve climate neutrality. 

Why CCUS is unavoidable for hard-to-abate sectors

Cement is responsible for around 4% of EU emissions, yet the sector has already reduced its net emissions by 28.9% since 1990, despite the predominance of process-related emissions.

This places cement among a group of industries where emissions are inherent to production processes.

For these sectors, CCUS is not an add-on solution; it is a structural requirement that complements other decarbonisation levers.  More than 120 innovation projects are currently under way across the European cement value chain, including largescale CCUS projects. 

From projects to systems: deployment now depends on an integrated framework

If CCUS is essential for reaching climate neutrality, the central question is now how quickly it can be deployed at scale. This challenge is at the heart of the Cement Europe Action Plan, which signals a strong sense of urgency and calls for a clear policy partnership to establish the regulatory, financing and infrastructure framework needed to match the sector’s decarbonisation efforts. The main barriers are not technological, but systemic. Effective deployment depends on three interlinked conditions moving forward together: infrastructure, funding and regulatory certainty. 

CO₂ transport and storage infrastructure remains underdeveloped and unevenly distributed across Europe, with slow permitting procedures hampering progression. At the same time, the scale of investment required for capture, transport and storage is unprecedented, and existing EU and national funding streams remain insufficient and poorly coordinated. Regulatory uncertainty, ranging from access conditions for CO₂ networks to long-term visibility under the EU ETS, further complicates investment decisions.

These constraints reinforce one another.

Infrastructure will not be built without predictable demand; capture projects will not proceed without guaranteed access; and financing will not materialise without legal and economic certainty.

The EU’s Industrial Carbon Management Strategy and the Net Zero Industry Act provide an important foundation, but delivery now requires coordinated implementation, including accelerated permitting, scaled up storage capacity and clear rules for CO₂ networks.

Competitiveness as the condition for decarbonisation

Industrial decarbonisation will only accelerate if it is compatible with economic viability. Today, the cement industry faces structurally higher electricity prices than global competitors, rising carbon costs cumulatively estimated at €97–162 billion between 2023 and 2034, and mounting exposure to imports. Since 2016, cement and clinker imports have quadrupled, often with a higher carbon intensity than EU production, while exports have fallen sharply.

Addressing these pressures is central to the business case for CCUS and other net-zero technologies. A coherent competitiveness framework requires reinvestment of EU ETS revenues into industrial deployment, effective derisking instruments, long-term predictability under the ETS, particularly beyond 2030 and 2040, and a watertight Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) aligned with ETS rules to ensure a level playing field for both imports and exports.

Legal clarity on CO₂ use

Alongside storage, CO₂ use is relevant for parts of the cement sector, particularly for installations located far from storage sites. CO₂ captured from unavoidable process emissions can provide a reliable input for industrial applications. However, regulatory uncertainty currently risks delaying CCU related investment decisions.

Providing clarity, through secondary ETS legislation, on which uses qualify as permanent, and ensuring that CO₂ accounting takes place at the point of release into the atmosphere rather than at the point of capture, are essential to preserve environmental integrity while enabling deployment.

Turning investment into impact

Europe’s cement industry is ready to deliver the low carbon, circular materials required for housing, infrastructure and the green and digital transition. CCUS will play a decisive role in addressing the residual emissions that remain after deep abatement has been achieved. Whether Europe secures this opportunity will depend on its ability to align competitiveness, infrastructure rollout, funding and regulation within a coherent policy partnership. The investments are ready; what is needed now is delivery.