ANRAV – the Balkan’s first carbon capture and storage project was officially signed in Brussels. The project owner Heidelberg Materials signed the EU Innovation Fund Grant Agreement on Jan 23rd along with 14 other projects that received the green light from the EU.
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ANRAV is a large-scale carbon capture project that will connect carbon capture facilities at the Devnya Cement facility in Bulgaria, a subsidiary of Heidelberg Materials, with offshore permanent storage under the Black Sea.
It received support from the EU Innovation Fund amounting to €190 million ($207 million), in addition to the partners’ sizable individual contributions. The project will be developed by Heidelberg Materials with partner PetroCeltic.
ANRAV will have a capture capacity of roughly 800,000 tons of CO2 per year and is anticipated to be operational in 2028.
“Devnya will be the first carbon-neutral cement plant in the country and the region… ANRAV will also enable other industrial players to join the carbon chain in the future and share storage capacity. In this way, we want to not only decarbonize our company in Bulgaria, but also provide opportunities for the whole region,” said Ernest Jelito, Member of the Managing Board responsible for the Group area Northern and Eastern Europe-Central Asia.
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The company also didn’t hide ambitions for the Devnya and Varna region to become a carbon capture cluster for Bulgaria and neighboring regions in Romania and Greece.
HeidelbergCement is investing steadily in decarbonizing its emissions intensive operations. Cement production is an incredibly carbon heavy activity as it uses coal and other fossil fuels in the process. The company wants to collectively save 10 million metric tons of CO2 through carbon capture projects that have already been started by 2030.
