More than 130 guests accepted the invitation to the second edition of OGE's ED Ruhr on May 7, 2025, which focused on a panel discussion with top-class speakers about a privately planned CO₂ infrastructure that connects emitters, storage facilities and users. Among other things, it was dedicated to answering the questions of what adjustments we still need to make to enable carbon management for the primary industry - against the backdrop of competitiveness, resilience and sustainability in North Rhine-Westphalia - and how business cases can be created.

The Background: The state government in North Rhine-Westphalia wants to be climate-neutral by 2045. The industries of the Rhine and Ruhr regions have embraced this goal and are putting a lot of effort into converting their production. However, some sectors are more difficult to transition to climate neutrality due to the nature of their production processes. These include, for example, basic industries such as cement and lime production. In these hard-to-abate sectors, carbon management needs to make a contribution to reducing CO₂ emissions. The challenge is to find a way of transporting the captured CO₂ for storage or further utilisation, and to identify the political factors that need to be addressed. OGE is offering an infrastructure solution and is planning to build a CO₂ network to provide a link between emitters and storage facilities or users.