CO2 INNOVATION
IN THE LIME SECTOR 3.0

Executive summary

The European Union is leading the vision and the global race for climate neutrality to 2050. The best tool to cope with climate change mitigation challenges and enhance European industry’s competitiveness it is the innovation at sector or cross sectoral level.

Lime and limestone are basic enabling com­ pounds which are necessary to many other industrial value chains, such as air pollution control, purifying drinking water, waste­ water, support sustainable agriculture, enable the production of low­weight steel for lighter cars between others. Without these base materials, many involved applications would simply not function in the same way. When you first consider the simplicity of the che­ mistry involved, innovation might not be the most likely word you would associate with this sector. However, the intention of this report is to demonstrate how the sector manages to pursue innovation in many areas, from fuel consumption to process and resource opti­ mization, application development, mining, and production technology, to really have a sustainable innovation pipeline.

The European Lime industry (EuLA) in its effort to demonstrate its contribution and achievements in innovation, has updated its innovation report with publicly available information on projects dedicated to innova­tion in energy efficiency and CO2 mitigation for a long time. During the least years, seve­ral research and development initiatives were launched specifically focusing on circular CO2 innovative solutions. This report, out­ lines some of the work that the member companies have already engage in the past to help our journey toward these policy /industry goals. These projects illustrate the company efforts to reduce CO2 process related emissions through carbon capture and use, improve energy efficiency, lower environmental impact during the use phase and at the same time improve the perfor­mance of lime products during the use in multiple applications. This is in areas where the quickly increasing cost of CO2 as part of the ETS scheme, is bringing more visibility to the importance of this topic. Despite ongoing innovation initiatives which are reflected in this report improving energy & resource effi­ciency in the production lime industry has started to pursue & develop opportunities to reduce the carbon footprint in the produc­tion. We have proven that over the life cycle of our products in the different applications already in average 33% of our CO2 process emissions are captured in about one year time via the natural carbonation. This fact is not accounted in our carbon footprint, yet.

It is impressive how member companies have embraced this initiative, and looking at some projects where no single member company could undertake the work alone, and to work together for the benefit of the sector. EuLA has started to develop solutions to capture already released CO2 from the atmosphere to address the fight against global warming by and acidification of oceans, rivers & lakes. EuLA has in the last years set out on a path towards looking at opportunities where the sector can work in a more collaborative way in terms of innovation.

If we go back to the objectives of the pre­vious reports, we were very much looking to demonstrate that the lime industry does
innovate not only in how the industry engages in production but also in how the products are used down the value chain. Today with this update we are showing that innovation is truly part of the day­-to-­day life of the industry, and that we are constantly looking at ways to improve lime operations and enable innovative solutions to industries that rely on lime. The European Lime industry is committed to reduce the carbon emissions and deliver climate solutions through the specific properties of our products. EuLA Innovation report, it is a sectoral response to Green Deal and illustrates the conviction that lime is an indispensable product that can contribute to EU and global climate challenges.