CO2 Value Europe: A new asso­ci­ation ded­ic­ated to the util­isa­tion of CO2

On 30 Novem­ber 2017, 43 lead­ing indus­tri­al and research stake­hold­ers from across Europe gathered in Brus­sels to launch CO₂ Value Europe, the new European asso­ci­ation ded­ic­ated to CO₂ util­isa­tion. Its mis­sion is to pro­mote the devel­op­ment and mar­ket deploy­ment of sus­tain­able indus­tri­al solu­tions that con­vert CO₂ into valu­able products, in order to con­trib­ute to the net reduc­tion of glob­al CO₂ emis­sions and to the diver­si­fic­a­tion of the feed­stock base.

CO₂ util­isa­tion: an oppor­tun­ity for a sus­tain­able Europe

CO₂ util­isa­tion, com­monly called Car­bon Cap­ture & Util­isa­tion (CCU), is a broad term that cov­ers all estab­lished and innov­at­ive indus­tri­al pro­cesses that trans­form CO₂ into a vari­ety of valu­able products such as chem­ic­al build­ing blocks, syn­thet­ic fuels or build­ing mater­i­als. CO₂ util­isa­tion has the poten­tial to become one of the major growth areas in Europe’s future low car­bon eco­nomy by offer­ing solu­tions to reduce the car­bon foot­print of hard-to-decar­bon­ize sec­tors such as energy-intens­ive pro­cess indus­tries or trans­port­a­tion, and by seques­ter­ing CO₂ per­man­ently in build­ing mater­i­als pro­duced by car­bon­a­tion of min­er­al waste. It can offer grid bal­an­cing and energy stor­age options to facil­it­ate the neces­sary trans­ition of EU energy sys­tems. It can provide an altern­at­ive non-fossil feed­stock for the chem­ic­al industry, thereby lim­it­ing import depend­ency. CO₂ util­isa­tion can also enable the devel­op­ment of innov­at­ive products with envir­on­ment­al and/​or soci­et­al bene­fits. Lastly, it can be a major source of eco­nom­ic growth, job cre­ation and con­tin­ued tech­no­lo­gic­al lead­er­ship for European indus­tries.

Work­ing togeth­er across the CO₂ value chain

CO₂ Value Europe is the only Asso­ci­ation which gath­ers stake­hold­ers from all the rel­ev­ant sec­tors along the CO₂ value chain: CO₂ emit­ters from the main pro­cess indus­tries, pro­viders of decar­bon­ated energy, indus­tri­al gas experts, trans­form­a­tion tech­no­logy pro­viders, users of CO₂-based products and research organ­isa­tions. The 43 found­ing part­ners of the Asso­ci­ation include 10 large indus­tri­al cor­por­a­tions, 12 innov­at­ive SMEs and star­tups, 10 Research & Tech­no­logy Organ­isa­tions (RTOs), 6 uni­ver­sit­ies and 5 clusters, ports and asso­ci­ations. The Board of Dir­ect­ors is com­posed of 7 elec­ted mem­bers.

Object­ives and ambition

The Asso­ci­ation is a think&do-tank for all stake­hold­ers inter­ested to exchange views on the rap­idly evolving top­ic of CO₂ val­or­isa­tion and to co-define a shared vis­ion for its devel­op­ment and imple­ment­a­tion in Europe. CO₂ Value Europe will closely cooper­ate with the exist­ing trade asso­ci­ations and col­lect­ive organ­isa­tions already involved in the top­ic. It intends to become the ambas­sad­or of the CO₂ util­isa­tion com­munity towards European policy makers and fun­ders, and to jointly devel­op the right busi­ness and policy frame­work to enable the indus­tri­al deploy­ment of CO₂ util­isa­tion solu­tions at a broad scale. Upon her elec­tion as Pres­id­ent of CO₂ Value Europe, Dr. Stefanie Kest­ing said ​“The respons­ible man­age­ment of CO₂ emis­sions is one of the burn­ing top­ics of our days. Con­vert­ing CO₂ into sus­tain­able chem­ic­als, fuels or oth­er mater­i­als has enorm­ous poten­tial and now reaches the matur­ity level which is needed for real impact. There­fore, we want to lever­age the col­lect­ive intel­li­gence of our mem­bers across the tra­di­tion­al bound­ar­ies of indus­tri­al sec­tors to identi­fy which CCU tech­no­lo­gies make the most sense from both a cli­mate and eco­nom­ic per­spect­ive, and how those can be brought to mar­ket at a large scale. Our ambi­tion is to become the ref­er­ence spar­ring-part­ner for all stake­hold­ers in this top­ic”.

First steps

The Asso­ci­ation ini­ti­ated the recruit­ment of a Sec­ret­ary Gen­er­al who will be respons­ible for the day-to-day oper­a­tions of the Asso­ci­ation, togeth­er with a small team based in Brus­sels. Imple­ment­a­tion of pri­or­ity work­ing groups and activ­it­ies has star­ted. A dozen of addi­tion­al industry and research stake­hold­ers already con­firmed their inten­tion to join the Asso­ci­ation in the com­ing weeks. Source: CO₂ Value Europe