HERCCULES – Heroes in southern Europe to decarbonize industry with CCUS
is a 5-year (2023-2027) project funded by the European Commission with the goal of promoting and accelerating a first-of-its-kind industrial-scale CCUS chain to decarbonize hard-to-abate industry.
Clust-ER Greentech is a partner in HERCCULES, an international research project that aims to activate concrete actions to curb CO2 emissions with an innovative, integrated and replicable approach. The primary focus is the decarbonization of cement production and waste-to-energy, two strategic sectors for the circular economy.
HERCCULES Project details
As also emphasized by the IPCC, the use of CO2 capture technologies is essential for achieving carbon neutrality by 2050, according to the scenarios outlined by European directives and the Commission’s own recommendations. In Europe today there are about 70 CCUS (carbon capture, utilization, and storage) projects in various stages of development, concentrated almost exclusively in northern countries.
Within this framework, HERCCULES aims to define a unique, integrated and replicable approach for the implementation of the entire CCUS chain in two strategic sectors of the circular economy – cement and energy from waste (EfW) – in an area – Italy and Greece – where the industrial potential of CCUS is largely unexplored. By harnessing the potential of two emitter clusters in Northern Italy (cement + EfW) and Greece (cement), and the knowledge of Northern European Partners with experience in the field, HERCCULES will be able to pave the way for the implementation of the first large-scale CCUS chain in Southern Europe.
The project is the brainchild of researchers from LEAP s.c.a r.l., the project coordinator, and the Milan Polytechnic University. It will be implemented by a consortium of 23 entities, including 13 companies.
The Partners will work for 5 years with the objective of demonstrating the feasibility of the entire Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage (CCUS) chain in the high industrial density regions of southern Europe, building several TRL7 pilot plants and exploiting the two most advanced storage sites (Ravenna in Italy and Prinos in Greece).
The resulting proposal was funded by Horizon Europe, the framework program established to enhance the most promising European research initiatives. The funding, awarded under an Innovation Action call, is about 30 million euros. Additional funding of about 10 million euros will be made available by industrial partners.
Role of Clust-ER Greentech
Greentech will be engaged primarily in aspects involving social acceptance and outreach. In particular, he will be involved in:
wp8 – Social perception and community engagement – within which he is responsible for task 8.4 related to citizens engagement and will provide support for Analysis of community public perception (task 8.3) and Regional stakeholder committees (8.5) local implementation & research in Italy
wp10 – Communication, dissemination and knowledge sharing – contributing to the tasks related to events (10.4) and recommendation to policy makers concerning CCUS (10.6).
Partners
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 101096691.
