Heidelberg Materials pauses major CCS project at German cement plant

Cement giant Heidelberg Materials will pause its GeZero carbon capture project at its Geseke, Germany cement plant due to insufficient economic conditions, Heidelberg said.

The German-based building materials producer began work on the project in 2023 and received €191 million from the EU's Innovation Fund to support it. Heidelberg said the project would make its facility the first fully decarbonized cement plant in Germany and was expected to capture 700,000 metric tons of CO₂ annually starting in 2029.

"The current pause is a decision made after careful consideration, to successfully plan the next steps for the GeZero project in the long term under the right economic and regulatory conditions," Christoph Streicher, Heidelberg's general manager of German operations, said in an Oct. 22 statement.

The company said the decision to pause the carbon capture project will not affect the Geseke plant's ongoing cement operations.

According to Heidelberg, one of the primary factors that led to the project's cancellation was the risk of securing the necessary infrastructure on time.

"Current framework conditions are not yet sufficient to support a robust business case," said the company in a statement. "In particular, the relevant value chains are not yet mature enough to ensure that CO₂ transport and storage infrastructure solutions will be available on time, and at an acceptable level of economic risk for us as a CO₂ producer."

Heidelberg emphasized that carbon capture and storage projects depend on several market actors involved in CO2 storage infrastructure and said these efforts require government-supported mechanisms to minimize risk for firms working on CCS.