Mitchell CCUS project handed US$5m funding from US DoE

Heidelberg Materials North America has been selected for award negotiation to receive approximately US$5m in funding from the US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED), Carbon Capture Demonstration Projects programme.  

The purpose is to study the integration of carbon capture, transport and storage at the new state-of-the-art cement plant in Mitchell, Indiana. The funding will provide significant support to the work that has been started under prior awards from DOE and catalyse further efforts to successfully completing the Front-End Engineering and Design (FEED) work necessary to verify the project’s technical feasibility. 

The application was submitted in 2022 prior to the company’s rebranding from Lehigh Hanson to Heidelberg Materials earlier this year. Heidelberg Materials will contribute about US$5M in funding for a project total of $10M. The funding was part of a DOE initiative that generated nearly US$189m in funding to support the development of community-informed integrated carbon capture, transport and storage projects across the US.

The new Mitchell cement plant will more than triple its current capacity and incorporates features to minimize energy consumption and enable the use of alternative fuels and raw materials to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The proposed project will further assess the technical feasibility to capture, treat and prepare for storage or use approximately 2Mt of CO₂ each year.