The cement industry, an industry characterised by low margins, is responsible for approximately 7% of anthropogenic CO2 equivalent (CO2e) emissions and holds the highest carbon intensity of any industry per unit of revenue. To encourage complete decarbonisation of the cement industry, strategies must be found in which CO2e emission reductions are incentivised. Here we show through integrated techno-economic modelling that CO2 mineralisation of silicate minerals, aiming to store CO2 in solid form, results in CO2e emission reductions of 8–33% while generating additional profit of up to €32 per tonne of cement. To create positive CO2 mineralisation business cases two conditions are paramount: the resulting products must be used as a supplementary material in cement blends in the construction industry (e.g., for bridges or buildings) and the storage of CO2 in minerals must be eligible for emission certificates or similar. Additionally, mineral transport and composition of the product are decisive.

The use of carbon dioxide as a feedstock for a broad range of products can help mitigate the effects of climate change through long‐term removal of carbon or as part of a circular carbon economy. Research on capture and conversion technologies has intensified in recent years, and the interest in deploying these technologies is growing fast. However, sound understanding of the environmental and economic impacts of these technologies is required to drive fast deployment and avoid unintended consequences. Life cycle assessments (LCAs) and techno‐economic assessments (TEAs) are useful tools to quantify environmental and economic metrics; however, these tools can be very flexible in how they are applied, with the potential to produce significantly different results depending on how the boundaries and assumptions are defined. Built on ISO standards for generic LCAs, several guidance documents have emerged recently from the Global CO2 Initiative, the National Energy Technology Laboratory, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory that further define assessment specifications for carbon capture and utilization. Overall agreement in the approaches is noted with differences largely based on the intended use cases. However, further guidance is needed for assessments of early‐stage technologies, reporting details, and reporting for policymakers and nontechnical decision‐makers.

To combat global warming, industry needs to find ways to reduce its carbon footprint. One way this can be done is by re-use of industrial flue gasses to produce value-added chemicals. Prime example feedstocks for the chemical industry are the three flue gasses produced during conventional steel production: blast furnace gas (BFG), basic oxygen furnace gas (BOFG), and coke oven gas (COG), due to their relatively high CO, CO2, or H2 content, allowing the production of carbon-based chemicals such as methanol or polymers. It is essential to know for decision-makers if using steel mill gas as a feedstock is more economically favorable and offers a lower global warming impact than benchmark CO and H2. Also, crucial information is which of the three steel mill gasses is the most favorable and under what conditions. This study presents a method for the estimation of the economic value and global warming impact of steel mill gasses, depending on the amount of steel mill gas being utilized by the steel production plant for different purposes at a given time and the economic cost and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions required to replace these usages. Furthermore, this paper investigates storage solutions for steel mill gas. Replacement cost per ton of CO is found to be less than the benchmark for both BFG (50–70 €/ton) and BOFG (100–130 €/ton), and replacement cost per ton of H2 (1800–2100 €/ton) is slightly less than the benchmark for COG. Of the three kinds of steel mill gas, blast furnace gas is found to be the most economically favorable while also requiring the least emissions to replace per ton of CO and CO2. The GHG emissions replacement required to use BFG (0.43–0.55 tons-CO2-eq./ton CO) is less than for conventional processes to produce CO and CO2, and therefore BFG, in particular, is a potentially desirable chemical feedstock. The method used by this model could also easily be used to determine the value of flue gasses from other industrial plants.