Following the signing of the ecological transition contract with the French government as part of the country's strategy to decarbonise the 50 industrial sites that emit the most CO2, Vicat confirms its ambition with the launch of the VAIA (Vicat Advanced Industrial Alliance) project. This project will capture and sequester 1.2Mta of CO2 at the Montalieu-Vercieu site in Isère, making this cement plant the first in France to achieve such a level of environmental performance.
As part of its “From Low Carbon to Zero Carbon” initiative announced in 2024 and aimed at accelerating the group’s climate roadmap, the company confirms its ambition to successfully develop major decarbonisation projects concerning its residual emissions from the Lebec plants in California and Montalieu-Vercieu in France. These projects focus on emerging technologies such as carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) designed to capture, store or reuse (eg in the manufacture of synthetic fuels) CO2 from cement production.
The French project follows the announcement of the Lebec Net Zero project last December. With the same ambition of moving towards zero carbon production, Vicat is working on launching an equivalent project at its 2Mta Montalieu-Vercieu plant, Vicat's main production site in France and identified among the 50 industrial sites with the highest CO2 emissions in France.
The project, designed under the name VAIA focusses in particular on the recovery and capture of almost 100 per cent of the cement plant's CO2 emissions. The captured CO2 will be transported via an existing pipeline, converted into a carbon pipeline to Fos-sur-Mer to be liquefied and permanently sequestered in geological reservoirs. The project is based on a collaboration with several expert industrial partners:
• SPSE, for the transport of CO2 and the conversion of a pipeline into a carbon pipeline
• Elengy, for the liquefaction of CO2
• RTE, for the supply of energy to capture and liquefaction sites
• ENI, for the geological storage of CO2.
"With the VAIA project, Vicat would take a decisive step in the decarbonisation of the French cement industry, by offering one of the most industrialised regions, from the Ain plains to Marseille, this same opportunity for decarbonisation. This project demonstrates our ambition to participate in the necessary decarbonisation of our industry, while preserving its competitiveness, in the service of French economic sovereignty. It is thus possible to preserve the industry on our territory while massively reducing our CO2 emissions, thus paving the way for a reproducible technological model for the entire sector," comments Guy Sidos, chairman and CEO of the Vicat Group.
The VAIA project, aligned with the government's ambitions for industrial sovereignty and decarbonisation, will be the subject of a submission to the European "Innovation Fund" programme in the 1H25 and in France to the aid mechanism to support very large industrial decarbonisation projects (GPID), opened in December 2024, to which the group responded in advance to the Call for Expressions of Interest.
Vicat has set itself the objective of reducing CO2 emissions to reach the target of 497kg CO2 net/t of cement equivalent at group level, a reduction of almost 25 per cent compared to 2015, and to reach 430kg CO2 /t for the Europe zone by 2030, before resorting to CO2 capture.
