Ladies and gentlemen, colleagues, friends,
Thank you for having me here today.
I want to begin with a simple observation.
Europe no longer has a recognition problem when it comes to CCS.
The role of CCS is now acknowledged in the Industrial Carbon Management Strategy, in the Net-Zero Industry Act, and more than ever in the collective consciousness and the wider debate about Europe’s industrial future.
So, the question today is no longer whether CCS matters. We know that. The question is whether Europe can build the full CCS value chain and make it investable – and on a timeline that can make a difference.
Because this is no longer a theoretical debate – It is a very practical one.
It is where the climate debate meets the industrial debate. It is where emissions targets meet permits, pipelines, terminals, shipping routes, storage licences, and investment decisions.
And it matters because to sectors with very real economic impact. Think cement, lime, steel, aluminium, chemicals, waste incineration, pulp and paper. These are sectors that underpin Europe’s economy. They provide the materials and industrial products on which the wider transition depends.
For many of them, electrification, renewables, energy efficiency and circularity are necessary but not sufficient on their own to eliminate all emissions, especially process emissions.
Hard-to-abate does not mean ‘impossible to decarbonise’. But it does mean that CCS is essential, not a “nice to have”.
CCS is essential not only for reaching Europe’s climate objectives, but also for safeguarding industrial competitiveness, investment attractiveness and long-term industrial resilience.
If Europe is serious about building a decarbonised domestic industry rather than simply offshoring its carbon footprint, then industrial competitiveness must be considered on an equal footing with climate neutrality.
That is the starting point for this discussion.
And it brings me to the core message I want to make today.
If Europe wants to move from ambition to implementation, it must focus on one decisive test:
In the CCS policy circles, we often spend a lot of time discussing strategies, targets, communications and announcements.
Those things matter. But they are not the same as delivery.
In practice, the real test is whether projects can move to FID: the point at which boards commit capital, contracts are locked in, and a project moves from planning into construction.
That is the point where industrial decarbonisation becomes real. And if we are honest, that is where too many European CCS projects still get stuck.
Europe does not lack ambition.
Europe does not lack policy recognition.
Europe does not even lack project pipelines.
What Europe lacks, too often, are the conditions that make those projects investable.
The Commission has estimated that Europe will need at least 280 million tonnes of annual CO₂ capture capacity by 2040.
2040 is not that far away.
In industry terms, that is only one or two investment cycles away.
So, this is not a question we can postpone to the next policy cycle. We are already in the window in which investment decisions need to be made.
And that is why FIDs matter so much.
They are the bridge between political ambition and industrial reality.
If projects do not reach FID, they do not get built. If they do not get built, Europe does not create a functioning CO₂ transport and storage market.
And if that market does not emerge, hard-to-abate industries will struggle to decarbonise in Europe at the speed required.
So, when we talk about CCS deployment, we should be clear about what success looks like.
For me and for the members of CCS Europe, success is turning project pipelines into FIDs.
And that requires something more than political acknowledgement.
It requires an investable framework.
At the moment, early projects still face too many open questions. Such as:
· Will transport infrastructure be available on time?
· Will storage be accessible and affordable?
· Will permitting be fast enough?
· Who carries the risk if one part of the value chain is delayed?
And many more.
These are exactly the kind of issues being discussed in board and investment committee meetings. That is why greater clarity on investment certainty, risk allocation and financial support will be essential to enabling projects across the CCS value chain to reach FID.
Targets alone will not build infrastructure and targets alone will not unlock capital.
CCS is not one asset – it is intrinsically interconnected value chain where each part depends on the others.
An industrial emitter will not invest in capture unless it has confidence that transport and storage will exist on time, at predictable terms and under workable access conditions.
A transport developer will struggle to invest at scale without committed volumes of CO₂ coming from emitters.
And a storage developer faces long lead times, high upfront costs, complex permitting and major regulatory responsibilities before revenues are fully visible.
So, each part of the system waits for the others to make a move. This is the chicken-and-egg problem at the heart of CCS deployment.
And it is exactly why Europe cannot afford to approach CCS as a set of isolated projects. A complete CCS value chain requires capture, transport, storage and market demand.
If one part is missing, the whole system slows down. That is also why the first wave of CCS projects is particularly difficult.
These projects are not entering a mature market with standardised contracts, established risk allocation and fully built-out infrastructure.
They are actually helping to create the market itself.
That means first movers face coordination risks, infrastructure risks, policy risks and commercial risks that later projects should not have to carry to the same extent.
We should stop pretending that the problem is technology maturity. The problem is market and infrastructure readiness. The problem is whether Europe is prepared to organise the value chain well enough for investment to happen.
And that takes me to my second central point.
There will be no large-scale CCS deployment in Europe without CO₂ transport and storage infrastructure.
This legislature has been dominated by one word: competitiveness.
Europe’s energy-intensive industries are under pressure from high energy costs, carbon costs, global competition and uncertain investment conditions.
But for hard-to-abate sectors, competitiveness will not be preserved by softening climate ambition, or by pretending these pressures do not exist. It will be preserved by building a credible industrial decarbonisation framework in Europe.
That is where CCS comes in.
For sectors such as cement, lime, steel, aluminium, chemicals, waste incineration and pulp and paper, CCS is one of the few realistic pathways to address unavoidable process emissions while keeping production in Europe.
So for these sectors, CCS is not only a climate solution. It is a competitiveness tool. It is a tool for retaining industrial activity, attracting investment, protecting value chains and creating a business case for low-carbon products made in Europe.
Because if companies cannot see a credible route to decarbonise here, investment will go where that route exists.
And if Europe fails to provide that route, we risk losing not only industrial output, but also jobs, know-how and strategic resilience.
So the debate should not be framed as climate ambition versus competitiveness.
For hard-to-abate industry, the real challenge is to combine the two.
And that means building the full CCS value chain and making it investable.
The goal is clear: getting projects to FID by building the CO₂ backbone. So what should Europe do to make it happen?
I would highlight four priorities.
First, implement the NZIA storage target in full
The Net-Zero Industry Act’s target of 50 million tonnes of annual CO₂ injection capacity by 2030 is a crucial step. Meeting that target is essential to building a functioning European CCS market and sending a strong signal to the rest of the CCS value chain.
But ambition on paper is not enough and while the NZIA target is ambitious on paper, it needs to be realised to serve as an anchor for the rest of the value chain. If CO₂ storage scales in time and at scale, the rest of the system can follow.
The storage target will only support investment if it is credible.
That is why implementation of the NZIA matters not only for storage developers, but for the bankability of capture and transport projects across Europe. Full implementation of the NZIA must now include clear permitting pathways, transparent allocation of responsibilities, open and affordable access to storage, and effective public-private coordination.
It must also include effective, proportionate and dissuasive national penalty schemes for non-compliance with Article 23 obligations.
And credibility depends on implementation. If storage delivery remains uncertain, then capture and transport projects across Europe will continue to face uncertainty as well.
Predictable and timely access to storage is what allows the rest of the value chain to move forward with confidence.
If storage capacity develops in time and at scale, the rest of the system can follow.
Second, build a European CO₂ transport and storage single market
Europe needs to move beyond fragmented national approaches.
A European CO₂ single market will require cross-border infrastructure, harmonised rules, proportionate regulation and stronger EU-level planning.
CO₂ transport infrastructure is the connective tissue of the CCS value chain. That means planning not only for pipelines, but also for shipping, ports, terminals and hubs.
It also means ensuring that large industrial clusters and geographically dispersed sites can both access transport and storage solutions. Because CO₂ will not stop at national borders, and neither should Europe’s infrastructure planning.
We must recognise all transport modes, including pipelines, shipping and terminal infrastructure. We must reduce unnecessary barriers to cross-border CO₂ flows. And we must ensure that access to transport and storage is fair, transparent and non-discriminatory.
At the same time, regulation must be carefully designed.
It should address bottlenecks and potential monopoly risks, but it should not over-regulate a market that is still emerging. What we need is a framework that supports scale-up, encourages investment and allows different infrastructure models to develop where appropriate.
A European CO₂ single market will not emerge by itself.
It has to be built deliberately.
Third, create an investable framework for first movers
The ETS remains central, and its integrity must be preserved. But the carbon price alone is not yet sufficient to deliver the first generation of CCS value chains at the speed Europe needs.
Early projects still face high upfront capital costs, revenue uncertainty, infrastructure gaps and difficult-to-allocate value-chain risks. So Europe needs targeted de-risking.
That means stronger use of instruments such as the Innovation Fund, the future Industrial Decarbonisation Bank, and ETS revenues used more strategically to unlock private capital.
It also means recognising a basic fact: Europe’s first CCS projects cannot carry system-wide risks alone.
If Europe wants projects to reach Final Investment Decision, it must give investors greater clarity on risk allocation, investment certainty and make tools available to manage early-mover risks.
Fourth, match European ambition with Member State implementation
The Commission has put industrial carbon management firmly on the agenda. That is important progress, and it should be acknowledged.
But Europe will not build a CCS market through Brussels-level recognition alone. Member State implementation must now match European ambition. That means national strategies. It means permitting capacity. It means storage development. It means transport planning. It means public-private coordination.
And it means stronger knowledge-sharing between Member States that are further ahead and those that are only now beginning to organise themselves.
Some Member States are already showing what leadership looks like, such as my home country of Denmark, but also the Netherlands and Greece who are rapidly advancing CCS projects.
The gap between the frontrunners and those lagging must be reduced to a minimum, because if the EU framework advances but national implementation lags behind, projects will continue to stall.
And again, the consequence is not only slower climate progress.
It is weaker industrial competitiveness, delayed investment, and a growing risk that Europe loses the industries it is trying to decarbonise.
If Europe does not address these issues, the consequences are broader than the fate of individual projects.
The risk of inaction on CCS is not only missing one technology option.
It is three strategic failures at once:
· A climate failure, because hard-to-abate industrial emissions do not disappear.
· An industrial failure, because investment will go where the enabling ecosystem exists.
· And a credibility failure, because if Europe sets targets without building delivery mechanisms, then targets become a substitute for strategy.
That is the real risk.
The question that European policymakers need to be asking themselves is this:
Do we want a Europe where hard-to-abate industries can invest with confidence because the CO₂ backbone exists?
Or do we want a Europe where every project is still a bespoke negotiation, slowed by fragmented rules, uncertain permitting and missing infrastructure?
Let me close with this.
Europe has the know-how. Europe has the technology. Europe has the industrial need. Europe increasingly has the policy recognition.
What it still needs is the implementation framework that turns ambition into investment.
And it means understanding that competitiveness is not secured by wishing away the need to decarbonise our industry.
It is secured by setting to work on building the clean, resilient industrial system that allows companies to invest in Europe with confidence.
Because in the end, competitiveness is not achieved by wishing away the societal challenge that will define our collective future.
It is achieved by investing in it.
Thank you.