From the Isère to the sea, the ambitious project to decarbonize a Vicat cement plant

The factory of the French cement company Vicat, located on the banks of the Rhône in the village of Montalieu-Vercieu about fifty kilometers east of Lyon, ranks among the 50 industrial sites that emit the most carbon dioxide in the country.

Topped with a tall chimney, it consists of silos of all sizes and a rotary kiln reaching 1.450°C where a variety of fuels are burned 24/24, including coal and biomass, but also a growing proportion of waste: shredded tires, old furniture, and animal meal. The air is thick with fine gray dust, tirelessly swept from the ground by sweeper trucks.

The almost century-old site is now at the heart of a vast project aimed at capturing and then removing the CO2 linked to its production via an old gas pipeline converted into a "carburet pipeline" and offering the same service to other companies throughout the Rhône Valley.

Once it arrives in Fos-sur-mer (Bouches-du-Rhône), the gas would be liquefied to be transported by boat and then "finally" stored in geological pits operated by the ENI group off the coast of Italy.

Dubbed "Rhône decarbonization", the project, valued at between 1 and 1,5 billion euros, has the particularity of offering a new life to already existing infrastructures, notably a section of gas pipeline of some 300 km and a methane terminal in Fos-Tonkin.

"Little bonus"

Besides Vicat, the project is being carried out by joint project owners: the pipeline company SPSE, the operator of the Fos-Tonkin terminal Elengy and the electricity transmission network manager RTE.

They aim to transport 4 million tons of CO2 annually, including 1,2 million tons for Vicat. Other cement manufacturers are preparing similar projects, but currently only Norway has an operational unit of this type.

Vicat, which plans to invest between 600 and 900 million euros and is also counting on French and European funding, launched its studies two years ago and plans an "investment decision" at the end of 2027 for commissioning three years later.

"2030, on an industrial scale, is tomorrow. We're not going to hide it. It's ambitious," emphasizes Christian Daumarie, director of the program.

The idea is to get to the low carbon cement market as quickly as possible because "the first ones will have a small bonus" thanks to the expected evolution of regulations on the use of concrete and cement, he explains to AFP.

"No other solution"

For Jean-Michel Fourniau, one of the three guarantors of the National Commission for Public Debate (CNDP) for the preliminary consultation carried out in the spring on the Rhône decarbonization project, the cement industry has in fact "no other solution than to decarbonize".

According to him, this necessity is linked to the expected rise in the cost of emissions on the carbon quota market and the evolution of European standards which "impose a massive reduction in the carbon footprint in construction by 2031, and therefore the use of low-carbon concrete".

"We have seen this issue of carbon capture and storage rise over the past two years because, with the prospect of zero carbon by 2050, for this type of industry there is no other solution than to capture and bury it," he told AFP.

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is cited by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as one of the solutions to reduce the footprint of hard-to-decarbonize industries such as cement plants, which alone are responsible for 7% of global CO2 emissions.

The Fos industrial-port area, the second most polluting industrial area in France after Dunkirk, has also begun a profound transformation to safeguard its industrial fabric while decarbonizing it, and is hosting dozens of projects.

As announced, the Rhône decarbonization project appears "rather virtuous," according to Philippe Chamaret, director of the Ecocitoyen Institute, based in Fos-sur-Mer since 2010. But "what will it represent in terms of energy to transport all this carbon dioxide? It comes from energy production, and we're going to expend even more energy to deal with it," he points out.