Without CO₂ pipelines, Poland's cement industry would spend more on decarbonisation, not less.

New site-level modelling for the TRANSIENCE project finds the European cement sector can reach net-negative emissions by 2050. A closer view of Poland shows why carbon transport and storage are decisive for the economic viability of that transformation.

TRANSIENCE project · 31 July 2026 · ~7 min read

Status: results from Deliverable D8.1, not yet approved by the European Commission and subject to revision.

Cement is among the hardest industrial materials to decarbonise, for a reason that has nothing to do with fuel. Alongside combustion emissions, a kiln releases process emissions from calcination itself — heating limestone drives CO₂ out of the rock. No change of energy carrier removes those, and the sector has no other mitigation option, which makes carbon capture and storage a prerequisite rather than one choice among several. That leaves it unusually dependent on infrastructure it does not own: a plant can switch fuels on its own account, but it cannot build a CO₂ pipeline network or license a geological storage site.

Poland is a useful place to examine what that dependence means. Decarbonising Polish industry has become a national priority, but remains largely reactive to EU mandates rather than driven by domestic strategy. Power sector emissions fell 24% between 2019 and 2024 while industrial emissions fell only 6% — and that came primarily from production cutbacks during recent energy crises rather than planned investment. Cement is roughly 13% of Poland's industrial emissions.

This study draws its regional grounding from Silesia, where a TRANSIENCE stakeholder workshop was held in March 2026. Silesia hosts only one integrated cement plant, with others in adjacent regions, but the sector works as a proxy for decentralised heavy industry: unavoidable process emissions, high capital costs, and dependence on national transport and feedstock networks.

The workshop's conclusions shaped the analysis. Participants judged that business as usual would rapidly undermine regional competitiveness as EU Emissions Trading System costs escalate, and recommended a systemic modernisation pathway as the baseline. They identified CO₂ transport and storage as a "Priority I" investment and a hard constraint — without an operational carbon logistics network, deep decarbonisation in hard-to-abate sectors is physically impossible.

They also warned that biomass potential is frequently overestimated in macro-level policy documents; given restricted regional availability and lower thermodynamic efficiency at high temperatures, it should be treated as a secondary energy carrier rather than a primary decarbonisation solution.

What we modelled

The analysis uses a site-level optimisation model of the cement industry (ITOMv2.0), newly developed within the project and applied across the EU27 plus the United Kingdom, Switzerland and Norway. It represents individual plant capacities, kiln types and local technical characteristics, then minimises total system cost across the fleet. Because it optimises the system rather than simulating company decisions, results are reported nationally rather than per plant.

Two features do most of the work here. Carbon transport and storage is resolved geographically across three destinations — northern offshore, southern offshore, and onshore — with site-specific costs from a European dataset covering pipeline, rail, barge and maritime routes. And fuel switching is bounded by physics: because a kiln needs a stable flame profile at high temperature, at least 30% of thermal energy at the main burner must come from high-calorific fuels, which stops the optimisation substituting low-grade fuels without limit.

Two scenarios were run, differing only in Polish infrastructure. The ambitious transformation baseline assumes CO₂ transport and storage is deployed on schedule across Europe and biomass supply chains are established. The delayed regional infrastructure scenario keeps every European driver identical — same carbon price, energy prices and cement demand — but applies the Silesian stakeholders' scepticism to Poland: onshore storage is deactivated, pipelines are removed from the regional portfolio, and carbon transport is restricted to higher-cost rail and barge.

The carbon price drives both, following a steep path — €176/t CO₂ in 2030, €234/t in 2035, €239/t in 2040 and €311/t by 2050. Together with energy prices, carbon price data have been generated by the external integrated assessment framework GCAM in the context of the Horizon Europe project IAM COMPACT. Cement demand is exogenous, stable to 2035 then declining as material efficiency improves, from about 173 Mt in 2025 to about 146 Mt in 2050.

One framing point matters throughout: this case study was built to test and validate a newly developed model under contrasting conditions, not to forecast policy outcomes. The two scenarios are deliberately extreme — an idealised rollout against a highly restrictive local delay — chosen to bracket the problem rather than describe an expected future.

Europe's cement emissions can fall below zero — but only with capture at every kiln

Under the ambitious baseline, the sector defossilises deeply. Net emissions fall from 97 Mt CO₂ in 2025 to a net-negative balance of −16 Mt CO₂ by 2050.

That negative figure needs its accounting stated plainly. Under prevailing emissions frameworks, biogenic emissions are recorded only when captured, since they are omitted from positive emission accounts. Burning biogenic fuel and capturing the CO₂ therefore counts as removal. The net-negative balance follows from that convention combined with widespread capture.

Getting there requires capture everywhere. In 2025 the entire kiln fleet operates without it. From 2030 capture is progressively installed, led by post-combustion systems because they suit retrofitting existing kilns, then oxyfuel kilns with integrated capture. By 2050 every active clinker kiln in the modelled fleet is equipped with carbon capture. Stored CO₂ rises from 9 Mt in 2030 to a system maximum of 64 Mt, migrating from offshore towards onshore sites in the final decade as onshore projects gain approval.

Decarbonising cement means using more energy

The fuel mix changes completely. Driven by the carbon price, the sector moves away from conventional fossil fuels towards renewable waste, a residual share of non-renewable waste, and electricity. Conventional fossil fuels are phased out entirely after 2035.

Despite cement and clinker production both falling, aggregate energy consumption rises about 15%, from 512 PJ in 2025 to 594 PJ in 2050. Capture operations carry a substantial energy penalty, and drying and pre-treating biogenic and renewable fuels takes thermal energy of its own. Within that total, electricity consumption more than doubles, from 80 PJ to 192 PJ — making a capture-equipped cement industry an electricity consumer on a scale it has not been before.

Cement composition shifts alongside. The clinker factor — the share of clinker in finished cement — falls from over 72% in 2025 to 57% by 2050, as blast furnace slag is phased out with the decarbonisation of steel and limestone and calcined clay replace it. Clinker production falls from 125 Mt to 76 Mt.

Without pipelines, Poland spends more and produces less

Until 2035 the two scenarios are indistinguishable. Marginal production costs rise from around €80/t in 2025 to a peak near €220/t in 2035, as the carbon price penalises unabated emissions faster than capture can be installed. Polish costs track the European average, so Poland enters the transition without a cost disadvantage.

After 2035 the paths separate, and the mechanism is domestic clinker production. Polish output holds near 9 Mt through 2035 against stable cement demand of 13 Mt. Under the baseline it then drops to 4.8 Mt in 2040 while domestic clinker use stays at 7.3 Mt — the model prefers importing from other European regions to continuing carbon-exposed domestic production while local capture infrastructure is still being built.

Under delayed infrastructure that option is less attractive. Because rail and barge logistics make carbon management expensive in Poland, integrating the region into the wider low-carbon supply chain costs more, and the model sustains higher domestic output — 6 Mt in 2040 — despite the carbon exposure. Poland keeps producing because importing became the more expensive of two expensive options.

This is where the investment result inverts expectation. By 2040, cumulative capital investment under delayed infrastructure reaches €820 million against €510 million in the baseline — 60% higher, and the premium persists to 2045, at nearly €1,400 million against roughly €1,050 million. Lacking pipelines and onshore storage, the sector cannot substitute local production with cheaper imports, so it front-loads capital into retrofitting kilns with post-combustion capture while depending on sub-optimal logistics.

Then it stops. Between 2045 and 2050 cumulative investment freezes at roughly €1,400 million and domestic clinker production locks at 5.4 Mt. At €311/t CO₂, with high rail and barge costs for captured emissions, further capture investment ceases to be viable and the sector hits an operational ceiling.

The baseline does the opposite. Enabled by a mature pipeline network and onshore storage, Polish clinker production rebounds from 5.1 Mt in 2045 to 7.5 Mt in 2050, above domestic use of about 6.4 Mt. Poland ends the period as a net exporter of low-carbon clinker, with cumulative investment rising to about €1,950 million, financing integrated oxyfuel kilns rather than retrofits.

What this means

The binding constraint on cement decarbonisation is carbon logistics, not fuel choice. The energy transition here is real and substantial — coal displaced entirely, electricity doubled — but achievable within the sector. Capture is not: it depends on pipelines, storage licences and inter-regional networks no cement producer can build alone.

Infrastructure delay does not postpone spending; it redirects it. The intuitive expectation is that a region lacking infrastructure invests less and later. Here it invests more and earlier, into retrofits that cannot then be built on, and stops.

The same infrastructure decides whether a region imports or exports. With carbon transport and storage in place, Poland becomes a competitive net exporter of low-carbon clinker; without them it holds a shrinking domestic position at a persistent cost premium. Inter-regional clinker trade is unconstrained in both scenarios, so the difference is purely economic.

Capture converts an emissions problem into an electricity problem. Cement electricity consumption more than doubles under the ambitious pathway, and whether that delivers real reductions depends on the carbon intensity of the power supplying it — which this sectoral model does not address.

Limitations

Two extreme configurations. The study explores only an idealised rollout against a highly restrictive local delay. Intermediate timelines, phased rollouts and partial network expansions would give a more nuanced spectrum of costs and investment.

Poland only. The sceptical infrastructure assumptions apply exclusively to Poland. A broader lag across several European countries would alter inter-regional clinker trade, potentially removing Poland's ability to rely on imports during its transition decades.

Fixed demand. Cement demand is exogenous, so the model misses downstream economic feedback: the cost premium in the delayed scenario would in reality depress demand, drive material substitution or contract local construction markets.

Single price source. The macroeconomic baseline is coupled to one external framework and its carbon and energy price pathways, so absolute cost curves and transition timings are highly sensitive to those projections. Competition for supplementary cementitious materials is also not fully modelled, and could intensify as clinker use falls.

Data and citation

• Scenario results are available on IAM PARIS
• Model: ITOMv2.0 · Region: EU27 plus the United Kingdom, Switzerland and Norway, with results reported for EU27 and Poland · Years: 2025–2050 · Scenarios: ambitious transformation baseline; delayed regional infrastructure
• Full methodology, model description and price assumptions: TRANSIENCE Deliverable D8.1 (will be soon available on the TRANSIENCE website)
• Licence: CC BY 4.0 — charts and text may be reused with attribution.

This explainer accompanies work carried out under the TRANSIENCE project, funded by the European Union. The underlying deliverable has not yet been approved by the European Commission and its findings may be revised.

The AI assistant Claude (Opus 5, Anthropic) was used to support the writing of this explainer. All findings, figures and interpretations derive from Deliverable D8.1 and have been reviewed and approved by the authors, who take full responsibility for the content.