Closing the industrial carbon cycle to combat climate change - Industrial feasibility of catalytic routes for sustainable alternatives to fossil resources

Topic description

Specific Challenge:

Greening of industrial and energy production, storage and distribution^[1] by use of CO₂ emissions from industrial processes.

The challenge is to sustainably convert CO₂ emissions from industrial processes into synthetic fuels and chemicals utilising renewable energy driven processes with novel, highly optimised and energy efficient catalytic systems. This has the potential e.g. to reduce by over 30 % the current ~665 Mt of CO₂ emissions per annum^[2] related to the Energy Intensive Industries in Europe. However, it is necessary to demonstrate the industrial and economic feasibility of producing synthetic fuels and chemicals by scaling-up the developed technologies to reach industrial production levels and validate the industrial exploitability and circularity.

• Develop and deploy highly innovative and recyclable catalytic material systems to facilitate the production of synthetic fuels and chemicals from industrial flue gas emissions: mainly CO₂ (but also CO and H₂), aiming at 50 % increase in the overall efficiency compared to the State-of-the-Art;
• Develop innovative, renewable energy driven, catalytic processes, to produce synthetic fuels and chemicals, at a sufficiently large scale to demonstrate its cost effectiveness, while reducing the use of critical raw materials;
• Demonstrate the full value chain for industrial production (including SMEs) of synthetic fuels and chemicals, whilst reducing greenhouse gas emissions;
• Address financial, regulatory, environmental, land and raw material (including critical raw materials) constraints, as well as public acceptance issues and socio-economic impact related to the proposed technological pathways.

Proposals are expected to bring the core technology from TRL 4-5 up to TRL 7 at the end of the project. The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of up to EUR 40 million and with a duration of up to 5 years would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. In line with the Union’s strategy for international cooperation in research and innovation, international cooperation is encouraged.

• Industrial scale demonstrator operational by 2026 based on Industrial Symbiosis and novel, highly optimised and energy efficient catalytic systems.
• Significant reduction of industrial CO₂ emissions (~200Mt p.a. reduction by 2050) with the potential to achieve a carbon intensity below 20g CO2eq/MJ.
• Enhance the effectiveness of renewable energy sources (i.e. solar, wind) by enabling the production and transmission of a flexible high energy density storage medium in the form of chemicals and synthetic fuels to be used for specific industry segments (e.g. aviation, chemical, shipping, defence) and validated through Techno-Economic and Life Cycle assessment (TEA/LCA).
• Demonstrate and validate the industrial feasibility and cost effectiveness of the technologies, at pilot plant level with a minimum chemical production capacity of 4000 tons per annum, while enhancing Europe’s sustainable competitiveness in accordance with the Commissions Industrial Strategy^[3].
• Significant indirect impact on air quality and citizen health through the filtering of flue gas emissions from large industrial plants (e.g. energy, cement, chemical, non-ferrous metals and steel).
• Foster a cross-sectorial European innovation eco-system to deploy sustainable alternatives to fossil resources and create demonstration capacity for sustainable catalytic systems of superior efficiency towards 2030 and 2050.

Clean Energy

[1]Masterplan for a Competitive Transformation of EU Energy-Intensive Industries Enable a Climate-neutral, Circular Economy by 2050. Report by the High-Level Group on Energy-intensive Industries, 2019

[2]Low carbon energy and feedstock for the European chemical industry, DECHEMA 2017. Industrial Value Chain - A Bridge Toward a Carbon Neutral Europe, VUB-IES 2018, Table 1, page 21: https://www.ies.be/files/Industrial_Value_Chain_25sept_0.pdf

[3]https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/info/files/communication-eu-industrial-strategy-march-2020_en.pdf