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 members1.
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.
