3 September 2026

 

Polyester is normally made from chemicals derived from oil and gas. French scale-up Fairbrics is trying to replace part of that fossil feedstock with carbon dioxide captured from industrial emissions.

The company is leading THREADING-CO₂, a Horizon Europe-backed project that will test the technology at industrial demonstration scale in Antwerp. The €22.5 million programme, including €16.7 million in EU funding, runs until June 2027 and includes a pilot line followed by a larger demonstration plant.

Antwerp authorities have said the demonstration plant is expected to produce around one tonne of polyester a day. That would be modest by petrochemical standards, but large enough to reveal whether the process can operate reliably outside the laboratory. Fairbrics has described a longer-term ambition to build a plant capable of producing 100 tonnes a day by 2030.

The company has already established partnerships with H&M, Aigle and Swiss sportswear company On. Its Antwerp project is more than a source of lower-carbon clothing: it is a test of whether captured CO₂ can become a commercially viable raw material for the chemicals industry.

 

Polyester still begins with oil

 

Polyester is often discussed as a waste problem: discarded clothes, difficult-to-recycle fabric blends and microscopic fibres entering waterways. Its dependence on fossil resources begins much earlier.

The most common polyester is polyethylene terephthalate, better known as PET. The same polymer is used in clothing, drinks bottles, packaging films and numerous industrial products.

PET is made by combining two principal ingredients: purified terephthalic acid and monoethylene glycol. Paraxylene, an oil-derived chemical, is oxidised to produce the terephthalic acid. Monoethylene glycol is conventionally made from fossil-based ethylene.

CO₂-derived polyester does not require manufacturers to invent an entirely new fibre. The objective is to replace these fossil feedstocks while producing chemically familiar PET that can pass through existing polymerisation, spinning and textile-manufacturing equipment.

A completely new material may require new factories and product designs. An alternative source of familiar chemicals has a better chance of entering a supply chain that already exists.

 

How captured CO₂ becomes polyester

 

Carbon dioxide is not a convenient chemical building block. It is highly stable, so converting it into larger, energy-rich molecules requires considerable energy and carefully controlled reactions.

Fairbrics’ process first reduces CO₂ to carbon monoxide. Further catalytic reactions create an oxalate intermediate, which is then converted into monoethylene glycol. That ingredient can be combined with terephthalic acid to make PET.

For now, Fairbrics’ route replaces only one of PET’s two main components. The company has demonstrated the production of monoethylene glycol from CO₂ but is still developing a route to terephthalic acid. Its current technology should therefore not be described as making polyester entirely from captured carbon.

A Japanese programme is working on the other side of the molecule. Chiyoda Corporation and partners including the University of Toyama, Nippon Steel, HighChem, Mitsubishi Corporation and ENEOS have developed a catalytic process that combines CO₂ with hydrogen to produce paraxylene, the precursor to terephthalic acid.

A small pilot plant was built at Chiyoda’s Koyasu Research Park in 2022. Material produced there subsequently entered a supply chain involving seven companies across five countries and was used in polyester for products including sports uniforms.

The resulting fibre was not made exclusively from physically segregated CO₂-derived material. The supply chain combined a limited amount of CO₂-derived paraxylene with renewable and bio-based inputs, partly using mass-balance accounting. Under this approach, alternative and conventional feedstocks can be mixed, with their sustainability attributes allocated to a proportion of the resulting products.

Chiyoda nevertheless demonstrated that paraxylene synthesised directly from CO₂ could enter an established polyester supply chain. The company envisages clothing containing the material becoming commercially available in the early 2030s.

Fairbrics and Chiyoda are tackling different parts of the same problem. One is initially replacing monoethylene glycol; the other is developing an alternative source of paraxylene. “Polyester made from CO₂” is therefore not a single invention, but the gradual reconstruction of a petrochemical supply chain.

 

The scale-up test

 

Producing a sample garment proves that the chemistry works. It does not prove that it can run continuously and economically at industrial scale.

Catalysts can lose activity or become contaminated. Reactions may produce several similar molecules, leaving manufacturers with an expensive separation problem. Heat and material flows behave differently inside large reactors, while impurities tolerated in a laboratory can disrupt a continuous production line.

Selectivity is particularly challenging when producing paraxylene. Reactions between CO₂ and hydrogen can form numerous hydrocarbons, but manufacturers need the desired molecule in high concentrations. Scientific reviews continue to identify catalyst stability, reaction optimisation and the control of unwanted by-products as barriers to commercialisation.

The Antwerp programme will need to deliver consistent product quality, manageable energy consumption and long operating periods without excessive maintenance. Even one tonne per day would be tiny beside the output of conventional polyester plants, which benefit from decades of optimisation and infrastructure built around abundant fossil feedstocks.

 

The clean-energy problem

 

The captured carbon attracts the headlines. The energy used to transform it may decide whether the process delivers a genuine climate benefit.

Reducing CO₂ requires electricity. Later stages may also require hydrogen, heat and energy for separating and purifying the products. If the electricity comes from a carbon-intensive grid, or the hydrogen is produced from natural gas without effective carbon capture, the environmental advantage can shrink sharply.

THREADING-CO₂ is targeting a 70 per cent reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions compared with conventional PET manufacturing and says the demonstration system will run on renewable energy. That figure is a project objective, not yet the independently verified performance of a commercial plant.

The eventual result will depend on the electricity supply, hydrogen production, source and purity of the CO₂, conversion efficiency and transport distances.

Large-scale deployment would also place CO₂-derived chemicals in competition for renewable electricity and low-carbon hydrogen with steel, fertiliser, shipping and other difficult-to-decarbonise industries. Polyester must offer sufficient emissions savings to justify its share of those limited resources.

 

Carbon utilisation is not circularity

 

Turning an emission into a jacket can delay its return to the atmosphere. It does not necessarily prevent it.

The carbon remains inside the polyester while the garment is in use. If the material is subsequently incinerated, much of that carbon is released. Recycling can extend its useful life, but fibre-to-fibre recycling remains limited, particularly when polyester is blended with cotton, elastane or other materials.

Changing the source of the carbon also leaves other environmental problems intact. CO₂-derived PET has the same basic chemical structure as conventional PET. It is not biodegradable and can still shed microplastics during production, washing and disposal.

In 2022, 85 per cent of household textile waste in the EU was not collected separately and instead entered mixed waste, generally destined for incineration or landfill. Synthetic fibres persist in the environment regardless of whether their original carbon came from oil or captured emissions.

CO₂ utilisation should therefore complement longer-lasting garments, better collection and textile-to-textile recycling, rather than provide a technical justification for producing more disposable clothing.

 

Why fashion may go first

 

Polyester is a low-cost commodity, making direct competition with established petrochemical production difficult. Clothing brands nevertheless have reasons to become early customers.

A jacket or running shirt made partly from industrial emissions offers a visible sustainability story. Brands can introduce the material in premium products, absorb some of the additional cost and learn how it performs before larger plants are built. Fairbrics ultimately intends to license its technology to manufacturers rather than operate every production facility itself.

Packaging and industrial textiles could follow if production costs fall. These markets offer greater volumes, but less room for a green premium.

The first garments have shown that captured carbon can enter the polyester supply chain. Antwerp must now prove that it can do so continuously, at consistent quality and with a credible emissions advantage.

That will determine whether CO₂ becomes a serious chemical feedstock or remains an expensive ingredient in demonstration clothing.

 

 

Further reading on MoveTheNeedle.news:

France turns fashion leadership into textile technology leadership

How Renasens is solving the EU textile industry’s blended-fibre bottleneck

Tackling one of fashion’s hardest climate problems — how EverDye is rethinking colour