Event Agenda

weTHINK. Waste Circularity & CCUS Technology Online Event

Time: 10:00 – 13:30 CET

10:00 – 10:10

Introduction and Agenda
Ingo Mayr-Knoch, weTHINK.

10:10 – 10:30

The Circular Economy in the EU
Strategies and Policies, Next Steps
European Commission, DG Environment

10:30 – 10:50

Speaker 2 

Topics

• Legal perspectives and trends on national and European level for RDF/SRF, Alternative Raw Materials and End of Waste.
• Technical challenges and innovation/ best practices for Carbon Capture Abatement.
• CDW (Construction and Demolition Waste).
• Exchange with the European Commission on Waste Circularity and Circular Industry.
• ISO 4349 Recycling Index Promotion in EU & Neighbouring Countries.
• Technology Status CCUS (Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage).
• Reduction of Bureaucracy Burdens of Intercountry Waste Transportation.
• End of Waste Status.
• Best Practices and Panel Discussions.

12:10 – 13:20

Panel Discussion

13:20 – 13:30

Wrap-Up and Follow-Up Steps
Ingo Mayr-Knoch, weTHINK.

Speaker Abstract

Martin Schneider, VDZ Germany

Advances in CCUS Technology and Project Applications

Full decarbonisation of the cement sector requires many different steps of CO2 mitigation, which at the end also includes carbon capture. The cement industry is a hard-to-abate industry, since process emissions from the raw materials cannot be avoided. Against this background, the cement industry is working on different projects, many of which have applied for support through the European Innovation Fund. Different technologies can be applied for carbon capture. Some of them will reach a high technical maturity once being applied in the broader scale.

The main bottleneck today is the lacking CO2 infrastructure and no easy access to storage facilities. Given the amount of CO2 to be captured and finally stored, the long-term solution for CO2 transport is a pipeline system. Such a system is still not visible to the scale needed to decarbonise cement plants all over Europe. The de-risking of first investments is still one of the biggest questions, together with the lack of CO2 specifications. The latter is of high concern, since impurities in liquid or dense phase CO2 can have an impact on pipeline performance, at the same time it requires a lot of energy to eliminate them from the CO2.

A working pipeline system and access to storage points is the absolute must for decarbonising the cement sector. This is by the way also the case for lime factories as well as municipal waste incinerators. There is an urgent need for political support, first when it comes to investment and de-risking, but also when it comes to storage: More access to onshore storage is really needed in order to come to storage solution in time and with better economics as compared to onshore storage.