Heidelberg Materials completes Swedish CCS feasibility study

The goal is to commission a full-scale CCS facility at the Slite cement plant on Gotland in 2030. The project is one of the largest CCS projects globally.

The study provides answers to questions about, among other things, the location, design, and capacity of the CCS facility.

The lessons learned form the basis for when the project moves on to the next phase, which involves planning and a detailed front-end engineering and design (FEED) of the facility.

Extensive study

Initiated in 2022, the purpose of the study was to map all prerequisites for the planned facility and present solutions along the entire value chain.

The study includes the technical design with optimization of energy consumption and energy recovery, analyses of the environmental impact as a basis for applying for a new environmental permit, and assessments of investment and operating costs.

The study was part-financed by the Swedish Energy Agency within the Industry Step (Industriklivet) program.

In the extensive feasibility study, most of the concept solutions that will be used have been concretized, which has provided crucial insights for the continued work.

Conclusions from the feasibility study:

• Enables negative emissions: With the increased use of biomass fuels, the facility will capture up to 1.8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO₂) annually. This corresponds today to 4 percent of Sweden’s total CO₂ emissions. Approximately 300,000 tonnes of the captured CO₂ is of biogenic origin enabling negative emissions via bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS).
• Location in Östra Brottet: The CCS facility will be located at a completed limestone quarry near the cement plant, which enables continued cement production in parallel. This location creates the conditions for efficient construction and operation.
• Innovative solutions: The facility will have integrated energy recovery throughout the entire production process. Through further optimizations and innovative solutions in areas such as heat transfer, the supply of electricity and heat can be reduced by over a third.
• Efficient logistics: Slite harbor will be widened and deepened to enable ship transport of the captured carbon dioxide to the North Sea area for geological storage. A new pier will be built to ensure smooth and efficient logistics for the transports.

Market demand

At the beginning of 2024, Heidelberg Materials launched evoZero, a cement that enables concrete construction without a climate footprint from 2025.

The cement is manufactured in Brevik, Norway, where the world’s first CCS plant for the cement industry is now being completed. The first customer deliveries have already been secured.

Slite CCS will be a more than four times larger facility and will play an important role in meeting the demand for cement without climate impact, and even negative emissions, in Sweden.

Tight schedule

The Slite CCS project is now moving on to the next phase which includes planning and detailed design (FEED), where technical, logistical, and business solutions are developed in detail.

This phase is planned to be completed at the turn of the year 2025/26, with the goal of reaching a final investment decision (FID) in 2026.

We are following our timetable and have received the answers we need to move the work forward purposefully. But the clock is ticking. In order to succeed with this extensive climate change project by 2030, commitment, collaboration and support from society is crucial. We are keeping up the pace and are now putting our full effort into ensuring that ongoing permit processes reach their goals on time. It is also crucial that the electricity network expansion to and on Gotland is completed in time for the commissioning of the carbon dioxide capture, said Karin Comstedt Webb, VP of Heidelberg Materials Sverige.