Holcim, the world’s largest cement producer, has officially launched its GO4ZERO project.

The groundbreaking ceremony took place on 16 May at the company’s Obourg plant in Belgium where GO4ZERO will deploy an innovative air-oxyfuel switchable kiln with carbon purification technology. The CO₂ will then be sequestered under the North Sea.

The project aims to be operational by 2029 and to store around 1.1 million tonnes of CO₂ per year. In 2023, GO4ZERO was selected for a grant from the EU Innovation Fund.

In September 2020 Holcim became the first global building materials company to sign the “Business Ambition for 1.5°C” pledge with intermediate targets for 2030 approved by the Science-Based Targets initiative (SBTi). SBTi is a non-governmental organisation with representation from the World Wildlife Fund, the UN Global Compact, the World Resources Institute, and the emissions reporting NGO Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP).

You can read about Holcim’s initiatives to meet 2030 targets as reported in the September 27 2020 issue of Combustion Industry News. In our May 6 2024 issue, we also covered the groundbreaking ceremony at one of Holcim’s first carbon-neutral cement plants.