QAZAQ GREEN. EU plans to give away €40 billion to carbon-slashing projects are bringing executives to Brussels, all claiming to have a winning idea, according to Politico.

Stefan Borgas already runs a multibillion-dollar Austrian company that supplies iron and steel factories. But that’s not exactly why he was in Brussels.

Borgas was in the capital of the European Union seeking millions for a pet project that doesn’t yet exist: solid carbon.

The 60-year-old industry titan has become an evangelist for a new technology that, he claims, will trap carbon emissions into solid form, storing away the planet-warming gasses before they hit the atmosphere.

The upside could be massive — if the product works, that is. The world is saddled with carbon-belching factories that can’t easily switch to renewable energy alternatives, creating a demand to capture the gas instead. Yet thus far, no product has hit the scale, price point or effectiveness needed to develop a true market.

So Borgas packed his schedule full of meetings with high-level EU officials to try and convince them that his product might be the one.

“If that works on a large scale,” Borgas said of his make-carbon-solid idea, “then we can decarbonize everything — the whole value chain and that of our competitors.”

The business exec said he was willing to pump €50 million into the project, but needs double that to build the first plant.

Enter Brussels — and its newly ample pocketbook.

The EU is preparing to hand out €40 billion to turbocharge carbon-slashing projects as part of its effort to reach climate neutrality by mid-century. The push has brought a coterie of entrepreneurs and big business executives like Borgas to the halls of EU power, all claiming to have a solution that deserves the bloc’s money.

Ecocem, a cement maker headquartered in Ireland, is multiplying its Brussels visits to proselytize. Verkor, a French battery-maker, is similarly intensifying its presence with an eye on EU money.

Yet the road to climate neutrality is paved with more head-spinning promises than sober-minded investment opportunities. That presents the EU with an existential question: How much risk is it ready to take when taxpayer money is at stake?

Most carbon capture ideas are “built on the whims and dreams more than reality,” said Eadbhard Pernot, who works with the organization Zero Emissions Platform that advises the EU.

When lobbying pays off

Borgas, CEO of RHI Magnesita, began scouting for novel ways to curb CO2 emissions when he realized that existing methods wouldn’t cut it for his businesses — a series of small refractory plants across the Continent that make heat-resistant materials.

The idea he settled on has caught the attention of some Brussels heavyweights, revealing the benefits of his pavement-pounding in the EU capital.