Defossilizing Industry Scaling-up CCU 2025

Raising awareness of CCU’s potential Negative perceptions associated with carbon- based technologies may be contributing to a wider lack of awareness of the economic and sustainability potential provided by CCU pathways. Coordinated messaging has a role to play, from communicating fundamentals to non-specialists, through to highlighting specific regulatory barriers to policy-makers. From an advocacy perspective, CCU companies individually struggle to highlight regulatory barriers due to their limited political visibility compared to large incumbent industries. Regional industry associations have emerged as key focal points for research and communication activities for CCU.67,68 Leading commercial CCU collaborations have also had success in advancing regulatory development (Box 5). Considerations for cross-sectoral collaboration 4.3 Practical considerations and actions for cross- sectoral collaboration between first movers and wider stakeholders across the CCU ecosystem are proposed below. Early-stage innovators – establishing strategic partnerships –Identify prospective sites with the infrastructure, low-carbon feedstocks and offtake potential required to realize scaling-up potential. –Consider opportunities to diversify offtake at demonstration stage to reduce offtaker risk. –Leverage opportunities to demonstrate credibility with legacy industries in order to establish development and scaling-up partnerships, including recruiting industry veterans to bridge cultural divides. –Establish multistakeholder advisory groups to aggregate technical and commercial expertise to inform business development and open market channels. –Engage early across the supply chain to overcome communication challenges, anticipate technical requirements and accelerate decision-making. –Enable economies of scale in downstream processing through aggregating product output between aligned CCU projects. –Participate in cross-industry networks that aim to advance CCU pathways and overcome market barriers. Corporates and industry incumbents – acting to enable scale –Leverage public funding to resource CCU technology identification and feasibility studies in support of sustainability goals. –Work with emerging innovators to identify mutually beneficial development and scaling-up opportunities, including hosting demonstration projects onsite. –Establish and/or participate in sector-specific or broader cross-industry networks to enable new project opportunities and to engage in coordinated advocacy. Public sector – structures to de-risk collaboration –Support the introduction of open-source research, development and demonstration facilities which can be co-funded by corporates to bring together the academic sector and industrial players to advance technology development. –Open sources of funding to de-risk R&D and enable legacy industrials to invest time in technology identification and feasibility assessment. –Draw on lessons from support of industrial clusters and CCS value chains to fund and de-risk anchor coalitions for CCU deployment. Defossilizing Industry: Considerations for Scaling-up Carbon Capture and Utilization Pathways 32