K6 Program

ongoing

The K6 Program project aims to produce the first carbon neutral cement in Europe, becoming a flagship project for the cement industry worldwide and supporting the green transition of a hard-to-abate sector. The K6 Program will transform one of the oldest and strategic cement plants in Europe (located in the Hauts de France region in France) and making it the first large cement company in Europe to take such a large step towards carbon neutrality. The plant produces more than 800 000 tonnes of cement (0.05% of the total volume produced in France in 2019) and uses 145 000 tonnes of local waste material per year. It also provides nearly 400 direct and indirect jobs, and supplies construction materials to an extensive regional market that ranges from Dunkirk to Paris. The project will deploy a first-of-its-kind industrial-scale combination of an oxy-fuel kiln and carbon capture technology. The captured CO2, otherwise emitted to the atmosphere, will be finally stored in a permanent storage site in the North Sea (although this part of the technology chain falls outside the Innovation Fund project boundary, the storage location will most probably be located in Western Norway). The project will result in the avoidance of 8.1 Mt CO2e emissions over its first ten years of operation. The integration of the K6 Program project with the nearby Port of Dunkirk will foster the development of the port as a future European CO2 hub.