Pioneering carbon capture

The Port of Antwerp is working with its stakeholders to achieve a 50% CO2 emissions’ reduction at the port by 2030 by creating common CO2 infrastructure.

Antwerp@C is an initiative of Air Liquide, BASF, Borealis, ExxonMobil, INEOS, TotalEnergies, Fluxys and the Port of Antwerp which has now entered into engineering studies.

“The time is now to make the transition towards a carbon neutral economy. Europe leads the way on a global stage. With Antwerp@C, the port of Antwerp has the key to realise an innovative cross-border CCUS-project, a first of a kind in its concept and scale,” said Jacques Vandermeiren, CEO Port of Antwerp.

We are very keen to move on to this next phase of engineering studies as this project will contribute to the Flemish, Belgian and European climate goals and to the increased EU 2030 targets for emission reduction to at least 55%.”

CO2 sequestration

The project aims to collect and export CO2 for sequestration in offshore capacities in the coming years and at reasonable costs or to make it available for potential future reuse. 

Engineering studies will further investigate the construction of a central “backbone” throughout the port of Antwerp along the industrial zones on both the Right and Left banks of the river Scheldt. It will also look into a shared CO2 liquefaction unit with interim storage and marine loading facilities for cross-border shipping.

These studies are partially funded by a Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) grant, which was awarded in October 2020, by subsidies from the Flemish government for the feasibility-phase and by contributions of all consortium participants. After the engineering studies have been finalised, a final investment decision for the first phase is anticipated in late 2022.

In the meantime, Fluxys, Air Liquide and Pipelink (a subsidiary of Port of Antwerp) have organised an ‘Open Season’ in order to map the initial demand for the CO2 infrastructure which is proposed to be built. The Open Season was an invitation towards all companies in the wider port area of Antwerp to make their interest known for CO2 transmission and/or CO2 terminalling infrastructure in Antwerp.The response gathered from the market will be considered in order to take a final investment decision.