Cement remains one of the most difficult industrial sectors to decarbonize, accounting for roughly 7 to 8 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions, largely due to process emissions inherent to clinker production.
In Belgium, Holcim’s Obourg plant alone emits around one million tonnes of CO₂ per year, supplying roughly a quarter of the country’s cement demand. Yet plans to retrofit the site with carbon capture technology have now been put on hold, underscoring how infrastructure gaps rather than capture technology itself are emerging as the binding constraint.
Holcim had been expected to reach a final investment decision on the Obourg carbon capture project this month. Instead, the company has paused the project, with Vincent Michel, director of Holcim Belgium’s Go4Zero program, describing the current risk profile as unmanageable. The decision pushes back the target for Obourg to become a net zero plant from 2029 to late 2030 or early 2031, assuming external conditions improve.
At the core of the delay is uncertainty over Belgium’s carbon dioxide transport and storage chain. Capturing CO₂ at a cement plant is only viable if there is a clear, bankable pathway to move and permanently store the captured volumes. For Obourg, that pathway depends heavily on developments at the Port of Antwerp, where BASF and Air Liquide are central to plans for CO₂ terminals and pipeline infrastructure.
The problem, according to reporting by De Standaard, is that those downstream investments are not yet secured. It remains unclear whether BASF will proceed with the terminal and associated transport infrastructure required to move CO₂ from industrial sites to storage locations. Without that backbone, Holcim faces the prospect of investing in capture equipment with no guaranteed outlet for the captured gas, a scenario that would expose the company to significant stranded asset risk.
The Obourg case highlights a broader structural issue in industrial carbon capture deployment across Europe. While capture technologies for cement are advancing and increasingly well understood, they are capital intensive and depend on shared infrastructure that individual emitters cannot justify alone. In Belgium, the lack of a fully coordinated national carbon capture, transport, and storage strategy leaves individual projects exposed to decisions made by third parties with different risk appetites and timelines.
For Holcim, the scale of the plant amplifies that exposure. Emitting around one million tonnes of CO₂ annually, Obourg would require reliable access to transport and storage capacity from day one of operation. Any interruption or delay in the CO₂ chain would translate directly into operational and financial risk, particularly under tightening EU climate regulations and carbon pricing mechanisms.
The pause also reflects the limits of corporate decarbonization commitments when enabling infrastructure lags behind policy ambition. Belgium, like many European countries, has set aggressive climate targets, but delivery depends on synchronized investment across multiple sectors. In the absence of firm commitments on CO₂ pipelines and storage sites, first movers in carbon capture face disproportionate downside risk.
Holcim’s decision does not signal a retreat from carbon capture as a technology, but rather a reassessment of timing and dependency risk. The company’s public stance suggests that progress at Obourg remains conditional on external developments, particularly whether Antwerp emerges as a viable CO₂ hub. If BASF ultimately withdraws from the terminal project, the likelihood of Holcim reviving its capture plans in Obourg diminishes sharply.
