EU Chemicals Industry Action Plan Recognises CCU’s Essential Role in Chemicals Production

On 8 July, the European Commission published the EU Chemicals Industry Action Plan. It aims to secure the EU’s industrial competitiveness and support the chemical sector’s clean transition by listing new and existing EU-level actions to achieve these objectives.

The plan makes it clear that the EU views Carbon Capture and Utilisation (CCU) as an essential tool for reducing emissions from the chemical sector, “CCUS is a fundamental net-zero technology to reduce dependencies on fossil fuels and contribute to the resilience of European industries, particularly those harder to electrify and to abate, such as chemicals (…). CCU can also improve industrial symbiosis, by linking sources of industrial emissions to off-takers across local value chains.”

As a representative of the CCU community, CO₂ Value Europe commends EU authorities for their explicit recognition of CCU’s role in defossilising chemical production. This is one of the EU’s strongest and most direct recent endorsements of CCU’s importance. We also welcome several actions listed in the plan, including incentivising non-permanent CCU through ETS rules; developing financial incentives to promote the uptake of non-fossil carbon; improving the regulatory framework for carbon capture technologies; and exploring cost compensation mechanisms through ETS, including chemicals.

In light of this, CO₂ Value Europe calls on the European Commission to:

🔵 Systematically ensure that these intentions become concrete provisions, including incorporating CCU in legislation holistically. This is particularly relevant for the incoming Circular Economy Act, where we believe all three alternative carbon sources (waste recycling, sustainable biomass, and CCU) should be incentivised.

🔵 Avoid siloed approaches. For example, when considering the bioeconomy, CCU can complement bio-based feedstocks by reusing biogenic emissions to prolong the circularity of bioproducts. Circularity should be considered as a whole, rather than treating complementary pathways as separate topics.

For many years, the EU has declared that CCU will be essential in the transition. This welcomed Action Plan outlines actions in the pipeline but only announces a few new ones. It is time to put words into action.

CO₂ Value Europe offers insights on shaping future EU guidelines for the transition. You can read our position paper on the Industrial Decarbonisation Accelerator Act (IDAA) here.