The world’s first net zero carbon capture and storage facility in the cement industry will be built by Heidelberg Materials in collaboration with the Canadian Government.
Canada, which is not unlike Australia in many ways, will invest in the construction of the full-scale Carbon Capture Utilisation and Storage (CCUS) facility, which will be part of its Edmonton plant in Alberta.
The cement, aggregates and ready mixed concrete manufacturer, Heidelberg Materials, has revealed a Memorandum of Understanding has been completed with Canada’s government.
The new CCUS facility is expected to be operational by late 2026 and capture more than one million tonnes of CO₂ annually. Once operational, the Canadian CCUS will be the world’s first full-scale carbon neutral cement plant and capture up to 95% of the Edmonton plant’s total CO₂ emissions.
Heidelberg Materials has a number of CCUS projects in the mix, none of which are as yet full scale. Ahead of the Alberta plan, the company’s CCUS facility in Brevik, Norway, will go on stream in 2024 to capture and store 50% of its plant’s annual emissions.
In mid-2021, HeidelbergCement signed the Business Ambition for 1.5 degrees Celsius Commitment aimed at limiting global warming and achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050 at the latest. The company rebranded as Heidelberg Materials late in 2022 and operates in more than 50 countries at almost 3000 sites with around 51,000 employees.
About the author
Desi Corbett
Desi is the Editor of Concrete in Australia and at the helm of our magazine for 8 years. She was behind the Institute's weekly news bulletins from 2016-2021 and is now writing our focused news items. Desi has been an engineering news and features journalist/editor across all disciplines since 2013 - part of a 30-year career writing for a wide range of industries.