Cemex Ventures’ latest investment in Waste to Energy Advanced Solutions places waste derived hydrogen and syngas back into focus as potential decarbonization tools, while also raising questions about scalability, cost competitiveness, and real emissions impact in clinker production.
The corporate venture capital arm of Cemex announced a new capital injection into WtEnergy, a startup developing technologies that convert non recyclable solid waste and biomass into low carbon syngas, hydrogen, and related bioproducts. The strategic rationale is clear. Alternative fuels already account for a growing share of thermal input in cement kilns, but biomass availability, quality variability, and logistics constraints continue to limit substitution rates across most regions. Technologies that promise to upgrade heterogeneous waste streams into more consistent gaseous fuels could, in theory, ease those bottlenecks.
Cemex Ventures frames the investment as a step toward integrating clean energy sources directly into cement manufacturing operations. From an industrial perspective, that integration remains technically plausible but economically uncertain. Waste to hydrogen systems face high capital intensity, complex permitting, and feedstock supply risks, particularly when deployed at industrial scale. The investment therefore appears less about near term fuel substitution and more about securing optionality in a sector where few decarbonization levers are available.
WtEnergy’s progress has been supported by public funding, which plays a central role in de risking early stage deployment. The company, in collaboration with Cemex, has secured a €4.4 million grant from the EU Innovation Fund to advance its waste to fuel conversion technology. Such grants are designed to bridge the gap between pilot and demonstration scale, but they also underscore that the underlying economics are not yet market ready without public support.
More substantial backing comes from the HYIELD project under the EU Horizon Europe program. WtEnergy leads the project at Cemex’s Alcanar plant in Spain, which has been awarded €10 million to develop a system converting bio residues into high purity hydrogen. While the project positions WtEnergy as a technology lead in biomass based hydrogen, its relevance to cement decarbonization depends on whether hydrogen can be produced and utilized at costs compatible with kiln operations. Today, hydrogen remains significantly more expensive per unit of thermal energy than conventional fuels, even when accounting for carbon pricing in Europe.
Cemex’s interest aligns with its Future in Action program, which targets net zero CO₂ emissions by 2050 and relies heavily on alternative fuels with high biomass content as a core lever in its 2030 roadmap. That roadmap has been validated by the Science Based Targets initiative under a 1.5°C scenario, but validation does not guarantee execution. Alternative fuels reduce fossil emissions but do not address process emissions from limestone calcination, which represent the majority of cement related CO₂ output.
