Sustainability: Furnace for the future
The ‘Furnace for the Future’ project gathers momentum
� The Furnace for the Future project is bringing together 19 container glass companies to significantly reduce CO2 emissions by replacing 80% of natural gas to renewable electricity.
� If successful, Ardagh Group will build the first furnace in Germany in 2022 with the first bottles produced in 2023.
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FEVE’s ‘Furnace for the Future’ project has recently been elected to Stage 2 of EU funding. Adeline Farrelly* explains what that means, what happens next and what it means for the future of the container glass industry.
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n 24th March 2021, the EU Commission published their short list of projects invited to enter the second-round application process for funding from the EU’s new ETS Innovation Fund. The container glass industry’s Furnace for the Future (F4F) was one of the selected projects. “We are so proud to be on the list and to get to the next stage,” says Fabrice Rivet, FEVE’s Technical Director. “The evaluators gave us very positive feedback, which is very encouraging, as
we now prepare the full application for the 23rd June 2021 deadline”. The Innovation Fund is one of the world’s largest funding programmes for the demonstration of innovative lowcarbon technologies. A total of 311 projects were submitted in the first round for grants totalling €21 billion making the ETS fund 21 times oversubscribed. Furnace for the Future is one of the 70 projects selected to go forward to the final phase.
Industry ambition By 2050 the container glass industry aims to achieve a major revolution, starting now, in the way glass is produced making it fit for a circular and climate-neutral economy. Companies are gearing up to secure the future of the sector and the jobs that depend on the industry within important value chains (food and beverage, pharma, cosmetics, and perfumery). The F4F is a collective industry demonstration project, technically
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