Construction aggregates firm Heidelberg Materials UK has been granted planning permission to build a carbon capture plant at its Padesword cement works in north Wales.
The facility aims to capture and store up to 800,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year from its existing cement facility, which will be transported via the HyNet North West underground pipeline for secure storage under the seabed in Liverpool Bay.
CEO Simon Willis said cement was essential to the UK’s transition to Net Zero, covering everything from nuclear power stations to low-carbon infrastructure.
The production of cement is carbon-intensive, with a large proportion of these emissions resulting from the chemical process involved in cement’s manufacture, so they cannot be reduced by using low carbon or renewable energy sources.
The only way to remove them and produce the low-carbon-intensivty cement the UK needs is to capture them using CCS before they enter the atmosphere, said Wills.
Once operational, the Padeswood facility will capture almost all of the CO2 produced during cement manufacture and enable the production of evoZero carbon captured net zero cement from 2029.
RSK Environment Principal Environmental Consultant Harry Cross said the project is the furthest advanced carbon capture project at an operational cement works in the UK by some distance.
RSK Environment has acted as environment, consents and permitting lead on the project, including coordinating the environmental impact assessment and project-managing the application for a development of national significance. The work drew on the skills and experience of 12 additional RSK Group businesses.
Cement can also have lower carbon intensity if certain production methods are employed, such as adding CO2 to the mix with formulas such as developed by CarbonCure in Canada. Fully decarbonised concrete that doesn’t use cement has also been developed and is being sold commercially as concrete masonry units by CarbiCrete.
