The European Union (EU) is aiming to reach a 55% reduction of greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions by 2030 compared to 1990 levels, and to reach climate neutrality by 2050. In the last years, dozens of new legislations have been tabled and adopted to drive the climate transition and create a regulatory framework that would enable to reaching those ambitious targets. Delivering on climate targets means decarbonising energy systems, but also defossilising our economy. To reach defossilisation, Carbon Capture and Utilisation (CCU) has been given an unprecedented role in recent EU legislations as one of the levers to reduce our dependency on fossil resources. The European Commission considers in its Industrial Carbon Management Strategy published in February 2024 that “the annual carbon demand for the chemical sector alone in Europe is currently estimated around 125 million tonnes, or about 450 million tonnes CO₂ equivalent, more than 90 % of which is supplied with fossil carbon”. Currently, alternative carbon feedstock (e.g. from recycling, from biomass or from CCU) represents less than 10% of the annual carbon demand for chemicals. Scaling-up the substitution of fossil resources with CCU products is no small task.

CO2 Value Europe is part of two EU-funded projects, VIVALDI and CO2SMOS, which both aim to address the environmental challenge of decreasing the CO2 emissions of bio-based industries by developing innovative CCU solutions to convert CO2 into high-added-value chemicals. Part of the work of those projects is to analyse the current EU regulatory framework and identify what are the opportunities and challenges to scale-up CCU technologies, for example for CCU chemicals or CCU fuels production.

Our work as CO2 Value Europe is to produce recommendations on how current regulations should be interpreted to support the scaling-up of CCU projects such as CO2SMOS and VIVALDI, and inform policy-makers about the environmental benefits of CCU, and how policies will be at the heart of their deployment.

Our oral presentation would focus on the learnings from our work in those two EU-funded projects and how current EU regulations are shaping up for CCU: ETS incentives, Renewable Enery Directive, Industrial Carbon Management Strategy, Carbon Removals Certification Framework, Net Zero Industry Act, EU climate target for 2040, all those EU initiatives are at the heart of discussions at EU level and every one of them is impacting definitions, thresholds, requirements, incentives that will help or hinder CCU technologies deployment. It would also look at our recommendations to strengthen that EU regulatory framework and how other projects can help to disseminate a common message on supporting CO2 conversion to chemicals and fuels.

After the EU elections, with a new Parliament and new Commission in place, the EU public policies on climate and CCU are at a defining moment to provide clarity and perspectives to researchers, companies and society as a whole. It is paramount to understand what is the legal grounds for CCU projects, what are the EU objectives for deployment of CCU, and what are the uncertainties and challenges that may impeach future projects from getting off the ground. It is also crucial that researchers and scientists are involved in those discussions to inform local, national and EU policy-makers about the possible consequences of legislations that are being adopted right now.