Sources: Vicat Group, Paris; CP staff
National Cement Company of California Inc. and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations have entered a cooperative agreement under which the agency commits up to $500 million for the Lebec Net Zero (LNZ) project at the producer’s operation north of Los Angeles. Agency funding could reach 50 percent of the first phase of LNZ, whose master plan calls for construction of a facility equipped to capture and store about 950,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide annually. LNZ also includes plant upgrades enabling the use of alternative fuels—especially biomass agricultural byproducts sourced locally—and limestone calcined clay cement (LC3) production. The carbon capture and storage (CCS) facility would be scaled to nearly match all of the plant’s CO2 emissions.
Through LNZ, National Cement and parent company Vicat Group seek to demonstrate that a combination of different decarbonization levers can reduce an existing cement plant’s CO2 emissions to zero—hence carbon-neutral output from Lebec. Initial activity in the first phase of the project, scheduled to run through Q1 2026, involves a Pre-Front End Engineering and Design study and setting up a Community Advisory Body in charge of relations with local stakeholders.
“This decision by the U.S. Department of Energy demonstrates the relevance and realism of our decarbonization roadmap,” says Vicat Group CEO Guy Sidos. “I welcome this decision by the American authorities to support National Cement, because without public funding, this project would not be possible. I congratulate the National Cement teams on this first step.”
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