The European Commission has awarded €7 million ($7.9 million) under the Horizon Europe program to UNCOVER, a new four-year initiative aimed at accelerating the commercialization and market adoption of CO2 capture and utilization (CCU) technologies across the continent.

Officially launching in September 2026, the project brings together 19 partners from eight European nations to demonstrate six primary CO2 Conversion Technologies (CCTs) and one Secondary Conversion Technology across three industrial point-source emitters: a waste management biogas unit, a wood manufacturing biomass boiler, and a cement clinker kiln.

The consortium aims to turn captured CO2 into ten distinct marketable products, including bio-methanol, bio-formaldehyde, microalgal biomass, pigments, microbial protein, polyhydroxybutyrate (PHB), and carbonated cementitious materials.

Steinbeis Europa Zentrum is managing data handling and leading the project’s commercial exploitation, scaling, and market entry strategies.

By substituting fossil-derived and resource-intensive feedstocks with captured carbon outputs across the chemicals, fuels, and construction sectors, UNCOVER seeks to strengthen European industrial resilience and circular economy frameworks.

“UNCOVER is about proving that CO2 can be used as feedstock to produce biodegradable plastics, wood-panel resins, low-carbon fuels and cement-based materials, competing on cost, performance and sustainability with fossil-based alternatives,” said Pablo González, UNCOVER Project Coordinator at the Instituto Tecnológico de Aragón (ITA).

The initiative projects that three large-scale conversion technologies will reach commercial deployment by 2032.

By 2040, the project estimates that 31 UNCOVER units could be operating across Europe, generating €180 million ($205 million) in profits for technology developers while laying the groundwork to capture up to 250 million metric tons of CO2 regionally by 2050.

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