Major success for CCU: the Net Zero Industry Act (NZIA) fully recognises CO2 utilisation as a net zero technology

The European Parliament and the Council of the European Union’s recent agreement in trilogues on the NZIA included CO₂ utilisation as an eligible strategic net zero technology, a major symbolic and tangible success for the CCU community as this technology was not considered as such in the original proposal.

This is a major step for the recognition of CCU’s role in reaching the EU’s climate objectives, where CO₂ utilisation can now be referenced as net zero in national policies deploying clean technologies and as strategic by national governments. CO₂ Value Europe has been advocating for this since the very first day the proposal was published and throughout the negotiation process.

As per their recent report, more than 21 % of GHG reductions from technologies will come from CCU, reducing CO₂ emissions by about 250Mt in the EU by 2050. The current EU economic and regulatory measures represent only 34 % of the effort required to reach climate neutrality, making the 2050 targets virtually impossible to reach without additional measures reinforcing societal changes (30 %) and technological developments (37 %). In this sense, the inclusion of CO₂ utilisation in the NZIA is a positive step forward to creating more incentives and therefore enhancing its scale-up in Europe. It will also complement other EU efforts and groundbreaking rules mandating the deployment of CCU for hard-to-abate sectors, including the revision of ETS, REDIII, ReFuelEU Aviation and FuelEU Maritime, and prepare the ground for new rules to use captured carbon for the production of chemicals (which in turn could then be used as feedstock for plastics).

Anastasios Perimenis, CO₂ Value Europe Secretary General, stated “As a CCU community, we welcome the inclusion of CO₂ utilisation in the NZIA as a net zero technology, and as strategic by national governments”. He added, “CCU projects require visibility and support in order to scale up, and this recognition is one of the building blocks needed to do so”.

The CCU community expects the final text, which is due to be formally adopted by the end of May 2024, to clarify several technical elements, such as the exact scope of CO₂ utilisation technologies, and whether broader carbon reuse will be considered under the law. Nevertheless, this recognition remains a major milestone in completing a supportive EU framework for CCU and creating an enabling environment for CCU projects to flourish.

CO₂ Value Europe is the non-profit Association representing the CCU Community in Europe with more than 90 members along the CCU value chain from various economic sectors and the academia, from large companies to start-ups and from industrial clusters to university groups. Their mission is to promote the development and market deployment of sustainable industrial solutions that convert captured carbon into valuable products, contribute to the net reduction of global CO₂ emissions and substitute fossil carbon. CCU technologies offer a large panel of solutions for hard-to-abate sectors where no or very few other alternatives exist. AT

https://co2value.eu/