Since we are facing a climate urgency, we have to act now. Both Air Liquide and BASF companies are committed to reduce their emissions and reach carbon neutrality by 2050. CCS is an attractive solution to reduce CO₂ emissions of the BASF site in Antwerp due to its prime location in the Port of Antwerp with direct sea access. Kairos@C project, unprecedented by its scale, already represents an important step on the path to climate neutrality.

Kairos@C received a grant of 356,9 million euros from the EU Commission Innovation Fund in 2022 for the realization of the project. This grant is necessary to bridge part of the funding gap of CCS, which currently comes with a significant additional cost compared to the alternative of continuing business as usual.

Safety is the utmost priority of all partners, and they will pay extreme attention to this point, before taking any final investment decision.

CO₂ capture and storage projects have already been successfully implemented in several regions in the world.

Now each field and each CCS project is different and as such all studies, tests and monitoring procedures need to be conducted with the highest professionalism.

We do not think renewable energies deployment should be opposed to CCS technology deployment. They are on the contrary complementary solutions. In fact, CCS will allow for the gradual shift from fossil fuels to renewable energies as it provides a rapid solution  when there is no cleaner alternative. It is available now and will help us reach long-term targets, especially in hard-to-abate sectors and industries.

CCS should also be put in perspective of the development of the hydrogen energy economy, as it could accelerate the production of low-carbon H₂. Indeed, CCS is one of the solutions to produce low-carbon H₂, using our current well mastered and energy efficient natural gas method.

Kairos@C combines three first-of-its-kind innovations, embedded across the project. It is also the first time that a cross-border CCS chain is deployed for hard-to-abate CO₂ emissions, especially in Europe. On top of this, several elements in the chain have never been performed on such an industrial scale, e.g. Air Liquide Cryocap^TM technology, the energy efficient CO₂ liquefaction and export terminal (ten times the capacity of the largest CO₂ liquefaction unit in operation today) and the liquid CO₂ vessels.

Every single step of the complete CCS chain already exists, but not necessarily on the same scale.

The big innovation of Kairos@C is to bring all these elements together and scale them up to an industrial scale.

First, Antwerp is the second largest European port (after Rotterdam) and fourth largest European industrial cluster. In addition, the BASF site located in the Port of Antwerp is the largest integrated chemical production complex in Belgium and a flagship site for the two companies. Its prime with direct sea access makes it an attractive option for CO₂ carbon capture and export in the North Sea. Finally, the project will benefit from Air Liquide and BASF longlasting strategic partnership in the port of Antwerp which already lasts for more than 50 years.

Kairos@C is a prominent example of Sustainable Energy Technology (SET) Plan strategy implementation, which looks for clusters and hubs linking a range of carbon and energy intensive industries to increase synergies. The project will support the Port of Antwerp in becoming a regional hub for innovative energy and carbon value chains, hence contributing to the EU 2050 carbon neutrality objective. The project will also contribute to maintaining and reinforcing European industry’s global competitiveness, in line with the EU Industrial Strategy.

Monitoring of the GHG emissions avoidance is a key requirement under Innovation Fund grant agreement and under the EU ETS monitoring rules. The partners will implement a comprehensive and auditable monitoring plan that will cover the entire CCS chain for the duration of the project.