The Last Word

Our popular Global Cement LinkedIn group (now with more than 7777 members) is a great place to get a 'reality check' on the cement industry. A few months ago I posted a simple question, 'What is in the future for alternative fuels (AF) for cement?' and we have had a lot of thoughtful comment back since then.*

Pavel Cech, the VP of industrial ecology for SW& E Asia at Lafarge started off by commenting, "In many plants it is already the case that fossil fuels are just used as a sweetener. The fuel mix will always depend on the market conditions and incentives and on process mastery. If a plant struggles to make good clinker with a conventional fuel mix, then good luck with the complexity brought by the real AF stuff!"

Be careful for what you wish for - that's what they say. You may have filled-up your car with petrol ('gas' in the US) and wished that the cash numbers on the pump didn't whizz around quite so quickly. Depending on the level of petroleum taxation that you are subject to, you may be paying a lot more for your distilled petroleum products than you might pay for a barrel of Brent Crude or West Texas Intermediate.

As you may have noticed over the years, I can be prone to pessimism when it comes to the outlook for the global cement industry. Over the last six years or so, since the gathering storm clouds formed that eventually broke to give us the acute phase of the Global Financial Crisis of 2007 and 2008, I have regularly written here about the inevitable fall in cement demand, the possibility of the collapse of the Euro and the likelihood of Greece being the first to leave, and various other nightmare scenarios that have yet to come to pass.

I recently saw a news article¹ on The Guardian web site that literally made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. As I read it, I thought to myself, 'This changes everything.' The report, which was tucked away towards the bottom of the long Guardian site, and which was apparently not thought of as being particularly ground-breaking or earth-shattering, was about an apparent breakthrough in nuclear fusion. There's also a smooth video² that accompanied the report.

In the summer I had the great pleasure of taking a holiday in France - the most visited country in the world (with nearly 85 million visitors in 2013, higher even than second-placed USA with nearly 70 million¹). However, because it's such a big country (nearly twice as big as Germany, for example), it was never particularly busy. Indeed, I cycled the 155km Tour Jean Robic (on a shopping bicycle, but that's another story) through the hilly heart of Brittany and the place was practically empty.