Analysis

A week ago, there were two fully-financed cement plant carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) projects underway in the US.¹ Now, there aren’t.

Projects to decarbonise National Cement Company’s Lebec, California, plant and Heidelberg Materials North America’s Mitchell, Indiana, plant were each set to receive up to US$500m in US Department of Energy (DoE) funding on a one-for-one basis with private investments. The projects were to include eventual 950,000t/yr (Lebec) and 2Mt/yr (Mitchell) carbon capture installations. Additionally, the Lebec plant was to transition to limestone calcined clay cement (LC3) production and the use of alternative fuels (AF), including pistachio shells. Both were beneficiaries of the DoE’s US$6bn Industrial Demonstrations Program (IDP), touted by former US Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm as ‘Spurring on the next generation of decarbonisation technologies in key industries [to] keep America the most competitive nation on Earth.’ Disbursement of funding under the programme was frozen by executive order of President Trump in January 2025.^{2, 3}

On 30 May 2025, Trump’s Secretary of Energy announced that the government in which Granholm served had approved spending on industrial decarbonisation without a ‘thorough financial review.’ He cancelled remaining project funding in signature Trumpian style, in list form.⁴ Among 24 de-funded projects, Lebec and Mitchell accounted for US$1bn (27%) of a total US$3.73bn in allocated funds that have now been withdrawn.

It's hard not to feel sorry for the management of the Lebec and Mitchell plant and the teams that had been working to deliver these projects. Heidelberg Materials has yet to comment, though CEO Dominik von Achten was in North America in late May 2025. National Cement Company parent Vicat, meanwhile, conceded the setback with a strong statement of its commitment to CO₂ reduction, to 497kg/t of cementitious product globally.⁵ There was a diplomatic edge to the statement too, however. Echoing the Secretary of Energy, Vicat said that its target remains ‘solely based on existing proven technologies, including energy efficiency, AF substitution and clinker rate reduction’ – as opposed to ‘any technological breakthroughs’ like carbon capture. There are currently no public details of possible back-up financing arrangements for these projects; for now, the best guess at their status is ‘uncertain.’

Alongside these group’s local subsidiaries, another organisation that has to do business daily with the DoE is the American Cement Association (ACA). President and CEO Mike Ireland has continually acknowledged the complex needs of the government, while stating the association’s case for keeping support in place. With regard to these funding cuts, Ireland’s emphasis fell on the latter side: “Today’s announcement is candidly a missed opportunity for both America’s cement manufacturers and this administration, as CCS projects have long been supported by bipartisan members in Congress and bipartisan administrations.”⁶ He reasserted the ACA’s understanding that carbon capture aligns with the administration’s strategy to bolster domestic manufacturing and innovation.

The early 2020s heyday of US carbon capture was founded on gradual, consensus-based politics – unlike its demise. Table 1 (below) gives a non-exhaustive account of recent and on-going front-end engineering design (FEED) studies and the funding they received:

Additionally, MTR Carbon Capture, which is executing a carbon capture pilot at St Marys Cement’s Charlevoix plant in Michigan, previously received US$1.5m in Fossil Energy Research and Development funding towards a total US$3.7m for an unspecified cement plant carbon capture study.¹⁰

Market researcher Greenlight Insights valued industrial decarbonisation initiatives under the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (ODEC – the now defunct DoE office responsible, among other things, for the IDP) at US$65.9bn in cumulative returns in April 2025.¹¹ The government has yet to publish any account of how it might replace this growth, or the 291,000 anticipated new jobs that would have come with it. Given all this (along with the extensive financial and technical submissions that accompanied each project), the issues raised by the DoE are presumably budgetary, or else founded in a perception of CCUS as essentially uneconomical.

Carbon capture is very, very expensive. A fatuous reply is that so is climate change, just with a few more ‘verys.’ Hurricane Ian in September 2022 cost US$120bn, more than enough to fund carbon capture installations at all 91 US cement plants, along the lines of the former Lebac and Mitchell agreements.¹² Unlike climate change, however, carbon capture remains unproven. Advocates need to continually justify taxpayer involvement in such a high-risk venture.

At its Redding cement plant in California, Lehigh Hanson successfully delivered a funding-free FEED study, with its partner Fortera raising US$85m in a Series C funding. This presents an alternative vision of innovation as fully-privatised, in which the government might still have the role of shaping demand. This is borne out in the IMPACT Act, a bill which ‘sailed through’ the lower legislature in March 2025.¹³ If enacted, it will empower state and municipal transport departments to pledge to buy future outputs of nascent reduced-CO₂ cements and concretes.

A separate aspect of the funding cancellation that appears decidedly cruel is the targeted removal of grants to start-ups. Two alternative building materials developers – Brimstone and Sublime Systems – were listed for a combined US$276m of now vapourised liquidity. Both are commercially viable without the funding, but the effect of this reversal – including on the next generation of US innovators who hoped to follow in their footsteps – can only be chilling. As non-governmental organisation Industrious Labs said of the anticipated closure of the ODEC in April 2025: “We may see companies based in other geographies start to pull ahead.”

Heidelberg Materials’s Brevik carbon capture plant came online in June 2025, 54 months after the producer secured approval for the project. The term of a presidency is 48 months. This probably means that producers in the US will no longer see CCUS as a viable investment, even under sympathetic administrations.

Even as government funding for CCS flickers from ‘dormant’ to ‘extinct,’ the sun is rising on other US projects. Monarch Cement Company commissioned a 20MW solar power plant at its Humboldt cement plant in Kansas on 27 May 2025. The global momentum is behind decarbonisation, even if economics determines that it will only take the form of smaller-scale mitigation measures at US cement plants into the medium-term future. We can hope that these, at least, might include the AF and LC3 aspects of National Cement Company’s plans at Lebec.

References

1. Clean Air Task Force, ‘Global Carbon Capture Activity and Project Map,’ accessed 3 June 2025, www.catf.us/ccsmapglobal/

2. Democrats Appropriations, ‘Issue 5: Freezing the Industrial Demonstrations Program Undermines U.S. Manufacturing Competitiveness and Strands Private Investment,’ January 2025, www.democrats-appropriations.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/democrats-appropriations.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/5%20DOE%20Frozen%20Funding%20-%20Industrial%20Demos.pdf

3. Colorado Attorney General, ‘Attorney General Phil Weiser secures court order blocking Trump administration’s illegal federal funding freeze,’ 6 March 2025, www.coag.gov/press-releases/weiser-court-order-trump-federal-funding-freeze-3-6-25/

4. US Department of Energy, ‘Secretary Wright Announces Termination of 24 Projects, Generating Over $3 Billion in Taxpayer Savings,’ 30 May 2025, www.energy.gov/articles/secretary-wright-announces-termination-24-projects-generating-over-3-billion-taxpayer

5. Vicat, ‘Cancellation of funding agreement for the Lebec Net Zero project by the US Department of Energy,’ 3 June 2025, www.vicat.com/news/cancellation-funding-agreement-lebec-net-zero-project-us-department-energy

6. American Cement Association, ‘Statement from the American Cement Association on Department of Energy’s Cancellation of Clean Energy Grants,’ 30 May 2025, www.cement.org/2025/05/30/statement-from-the-american-cement-association-on-department-of-energys-cancellation-of-clean-energy-grants/

7. Gov Tribe, ‘Cooperative Agreement DEFE0031942,’ 30 September 2022, www.govtribe.com/award/federal-grant-award/cooperative-agreement-defe0031942

8. Higher Gov, ‘DECD0000010 Cooperative Agreement,’ 13 May 2024, www.highergov.com/grant/DECD0000010/

9. Gov Tribe, ‘Cooperative Agreement DEFE0032222,’ 7 February 2025, www.govtribe.com/award/federal-grant-award/cooperative-agreement-defe0032222

10. Higher Gov, ‘DEFE0031949 Cooperative Agreement,’ 1 May 2023, www.highergov.com/grant/DEFE0031949/

11. Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, ‘Jobs, Economic Impact of OCED Closure,’ 11 April 2025, www.c2es.org/press-release/oced-closure-could-cost-65-billion-290000-jobs/

12. National Centers for Environmental Information, ‘Events,’ accessed 4 June 2025, www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/billions/events/US/2022?disasters%5B%5D=tropical-cyclone

13. US Congress, ‘H.R.1534 - IMPACT Act,’ 26 March 2025, www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/1534

The Polish Cement Association (SPC) has taken a swing at mounting cement imports from outside of the European Union (EU) in recent weeks. Its ‘apocalyptic’ message was underlined by the name of a seminar it participated in at the European Parliament: “Is the end of cement production in the EU approaching?” The SPC’s primary target appeared to be imports from Ukraine. It said that, “...cement imports from Ukraine - only to Poland - have increased by almost 3000% over five years (2019 - 2024). (In 2024) it amounted to more than 650,000t, and forecasts for 2025 already indicate more than 1Mt.” However, it detailed other issues affecting the sector including high energy prices, the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) and decarbonisation costs such as carbon capture.

The SPC is clearly keen to find cross-country support in the EU. In its accompanying statement it said "The uncontrolled increase in imports - from Ukraine to Poland or Romania, and from Türkiye and Africa to Italy or Spain - is already directly threatening cement producers, and will only continue to rise until the full implementation of the CBAM. It shows that imports from outside the EU are not just a problem for Poland.” Representatives from the cement associations in the later countries - CIROM, AITEC and Oficemen - all added comments to the SPC statement.

The SPC has called for a customs quota on cement imports from Ukraine to Poland to be introduced. It also asked for the European Commission to extend the EU ETS indirect cost compensation scheme to include the cement sector in order to further hedge against rising energy bills. It argues that this measure is essential to keep the cement industry competitive both now and in the future. Future electricity consumption is expected to double as cement plants start to install carbon capture technology.

Graph 1: Domestic cement sales and imports in Poland, 2019 - 2024. Source: SPC, Eurostat. Note: 2024 sales estimated.

Data from the SPC suggests that domestic cement sales in Poland peaked at 19.4Mt in 2022. They fell by 12% year-on-year to 16.6Mt in 2023 and then appear to have grown to 17.1Mt in 2024 based on estimated data. It is hard to replicate the SPC’s methodology for determining cement imports into Poland based on Eurostat data. However, data in its Economic Impact Report published at the end of 2024 suggests that imports from Ukraine grew from 79,000t in 2019 to 332,000t in 2023. Any significant rise in imports of cement in 2024, as the local industry recovered from the decline in 2023, seems likely to have caused concern.

Polish concern at growing imports from Ukraine started to be expressed in the press from early 2024 onwards when the 2023 data became apparent. Germany had been the biggest source of imports from the mid-2010s. Yet Germany and Ukraine both supplied about 30% of total imports each in 2023. For example, SPC head Zbigniew Pilch noted in April 2024 that imports from Ukraine were growing steadily each month and represented nearly half of total imports in January 2024. He described these volumes as “deeply concerning.” The Association of Cement Producers in Ukraine (Ukrcement) later attempted to soothe Polish concerns in late 2024 looking at longer import trends and bringing up the challenges facing Ukraine-based producers operating in a warzone.

Concerns about imports from Ukraine in eastern countries in the EU go back decades but have been clouded by the war with Russia. This is now reasserting itself as import levels grow, the cost of decarbonising heavy industry becomes more urgent and the CBAM comes into force. That said , cement plants in Ukraine look unlikely to cope with the CBAM that well due to their relatively high emissions intensity. Yet, other exporting countries outside the EU with lower cement sector emissions intensities may simply displace their competitors. Hence, the SPC’s call for a quota. The kinds of arguments that the SPC is making about carbon leakage are likely to grow fiercer across the EU as the definitive stage of the CBAM, due to start in 2026, draws nearer. Will the current situation lead to ‘the end of cement production in the EU?’ Time will tell…

Najmat Al Samawa Cement (NAS Cement) in Iraq announced this week that its second production line was successfully fired up on 13 May 2025. The new 5500t/day line was formally announced in May 2023. It joins the existing line at the site and should bring the plant’s total production capacity to around 3Mt/yr. The plant is a joint-venture between Pakistan-based Lucky Cement Limited and the Al Shumookh Company in Dubai and its representatives in Iraq.

Global Cement Magazine interviewed Intezar Ahmad, the Director of Operations at NAS Cement, in the November 2024 issue. He explained that China-based TCDRI was the main contractor for both the original and new lines. Equipment for Line 2 was also supplied by Fives Pillard, Loesche and IKN. Commissioning was scheduled for the second quarter of 2025. This, nicely, appears to be spot on. Lucky Cement added in its statement about the new line this week that it is also building a new 0.65Mt/yr cement grinding mill at the plant. This addition is expected to be commissioned during the second half of the 2025 calendar year. Lucky Cement also operates a cement grinding plant, under a joint-venture, in Basra.

The expansion at NAS Cement is by no means the only one as there have been a number of project announcements over the last three months. Germany-based Gebr. Pfeiffer revealed in late-March 2025 that it had won an order to supply a vertical roller mill for the Al Amir cement plant in Najaf. This contract was awarded through the China-based contractor Sinoma Suzhou. Commissioning is planned for the second half of 2026. Then, one month later in April 2025, Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani made a statement launching ‘implementation works’ at four cement plants in Al-Muthanna Province. This included the 6000t/day Al-Arabi Cement Plant, the 6000t/day Al-Khairat Al-Muthanna Cement Plant, the 6600t/day Al-Samawa Cement Plant and the 6000t/day Al-Etihad Cement Plant. Al-Sudani also mentioned the start of commercial operations at NAS Cement’s second line. Subsequently, IVI Holding signed a US$240m deal with Sinoma Overseas in mid-May 2025 to build a 6000t/day plant in Al-Muthanna Province. Presumably, this is one of the projects that the government highlighted. Finally, the Kurdistan Region prime minister Masrour Barzani inaugurated the 6300t/day Dabin cement plant at around the same time. This last project was built by PowerChina together with a power station.

The Iraqi economy has been doing well in recent years. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) reported in May 2025 that the non-oil sector experienced “very strong growth” of 13.8% in 2023. This slowed down to 2.5% in 2024 due to a slowdown in public investment and in the services sector, and a weaker trade balance. However, the IMF noted that the agriculture, manufacturing, and construction sectors had remained resilient. Non-oil sector growth is forecast to remain subdued in 2025 amid a “...challenging global environment and financing constraints.” In its coverage of the new line at NAS Cement, Pakistan Today reported that the country has a notional cement production capacity of around 40Mt/yr but that many of the older plants have suffered from under-investment. Accordingly, the domestic market is around 25Mt/yr supported by state-funded housing projects, oil-field infrastructure schemes and reconstruction in Mosul. 3 - 4Mt of this is supplied via imports from Iran and Türkiye. The newspaper also noted the risk that all these new cement plant projects may face from variable gas supplies from the government. NAS Cement, for example, switched from heavy fuel oil (HFO) to gas in 2022.

Cement sector capacity expansion is coming in Iraq following a revived local economy. Risks abound though due to the country’s economic outlook, its dependence on oil and an geopolitical uncertainty. Yet money is being spent and new projects are starting to be commissioned. Onwards!

Demand for heavy building materials in the UK dropped in the first quarter of 2025, with ready-mix concrete sales reaching a new 60-year low.¹ In an update last week, the UK’s Mineral Products Association (MPA) attributed the decline to existing economic headwinds, compounded by global trade disruptions, reduced investor confidence and renewed inflationary pressures.

Major infrastructure projects – including the HS2 high-speed railway in the English Midlands, the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant in Somerset and the Sizewell C nuclear power plant in Suffolk – failed to offset delays and cancellations by cash-strapped local councils to roadwork projects. Residential construction, meanwhile, is ‘slowly but steadily’ recovering from historical lows, amid continuing high mortgage rates since late 2024.

The most interesting part of the MPA’s market appraisal was its warning of ‘new risks emerging in the global economy.’ These concern the new tariffs raised by the US against its import partners. The possible consequences, the MPA says, imperil the UK’s supply chains, construction sector and growth.

Of particular immediacy is the threat of imports into the UK from countries that previously focussed on the US market. The MPA said that the industry ‘cannot compete’ against increased low-cost, CO₂-intensive imports. It named Türkiye, which sends around 6.9Mt/yr of cement and clinker to the US, as a key threat. Türkiye became subject to the blanket 10% ‘baseline’ tariff on 2 April 2025.

The MPA probably didn’t have a particular company in mind when it said this. However, it bears noting that Turkish interests gained a share of UK cement capacity in October 2024, when Çimsa acquired 95% of Northern Ireland-based Mannok. Besides the Derrylin cement plant (situated on the border between Fermanagh, UK, and Cavan, Ireland), Mannok operates the Rochester cement storage and distribution facility in Kent, 50km from London. The facility currently supplies cement from Derrylin to Southern England and the Midlands. It could easily serve as a base of operations for processing and distributing imported cement and clinker from further afield.

Meanwhile in South West England, Portugal-based Cimpor is building a €20 – 25m cement import terminal in the Port of Bristol. The company is subject to 20% tariffs on shipments to the US from its home country. Its parent company, Taiwan Cement Corporation, is subject to 32% US tariffs from Taiwan.

But the plot thickens… On 8 May 2025, the UK became the first country to conclude a trade agreement with the US after the erection of the new tariff regime, under which the US$73bn/yr-worth of British goods sold in the US became subject to a 10% tariff.² The latest agreement brought partial relief for an allied sector of UK cement: steel. 180,000t flowed into the US from the UK in 2024.³ In 2024, the UK exported 7120t of cement and clinker to the US, up by a factor of 10 decade-on-decade from just 714t in 2014, all of it into two US customs districts, Philadelphia and New York City.⁴

In what may be one of the first true ‘Brexit benefits,’ UK cement exporters now ‘enjoy’ a US tariff rate half that of their EU competitors, notably those in Greece. Like the UK’s more modest volumes, Greece’s 1.82Mt/yr-worth of cement and clinker exports stateside also enter via the US’ eastern seaports, at New York City, Tampa and Norfolk. Given the overlaps in ownership between the Greek and UK cement sectors, it is conceivable that optimisation of cement export flows across Europe may already be under discussion.

On 6 May 2025, the UK and Indian governments announced a trade deal that will lift customs duties on almost all current Indian exports to the UK. UK MPs are still seeking clarifications as to whether this will include industrial products that might be dumped.⁵ Theoretically, the threat from an oversupplied and fast-growing cement industry like India’s could be existential to the UK cement industry.

As the UK invests heavily in its future, including with the HyNet Consortium, imports pose a major threat. Given enough time, the UK could develop a leading position in the decarbonisation space. Will it have enough time? Existential threats certainly add a sense of jeopardy.

References
1. Mineral Products Association, ‘Weak start to 2025 for building materials sales amid growing economic headwinds,’ 6 May 2025, www.mineralproducts.org/News/2025/release16.aspx

2. HM Government, ‘UK overseas trade in goods statistics November 2024,’ 16 January 2025, www.gov.uk/government/statistics/uk-overseas-trade-in-goods-statistics-november-2024/uk-overseas-trade-in-goods-statistics-november-2024-commentary

3. UK Steel, ‘US 25% tariffs on UK steel imports come into effect,’ 12 March 2025, www.uksteel.org/steel-news-2025/us-25-tariffs-on-uk-steel-imports-come-into-effect

4. United States Geological Survey, ‘Cement in December 2024,’ January 2025, https://d9-wret.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/assets/palladium/production/s3fs-public/media/files/mis-202412-cemen.pdf

5. Welsh Liberal Democrats, ‘UK-Indian Trade Deal: Government Refuses to Answer Whether it Has Conceded on Cheap Indian Steel Imports,’ 6 May 2025, www.libdems.wales/news/article/uk-indian-trade-deal-government-refuses-to-answer-whether-it-has-conceded-on-cheap-indian-steel-imports

Stop press! The Portland Cement Association (PCA) has renamed itself as the American Cement Association (ACA).

Speaking to the audience at the IEEE-IAS/PCA Cement Industry Cement Conference taking place this week in Birmingham, Alabama, ACA president Mike Ireland said that the new name better represents its members, from the Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific coast. He added that the old name, the PCA, had caused the association confusion over the years with it being mistaken as only representing Portland, Oregon, or Portland, Maine.

This follows comments from Ireland to Global Cement Magazine in April 2024. At that time he also mentioned how changing levels of production of ordinary Portland cement (OPC) compared to blended cements had suggested a rethink. Surveys were then sent out by the PCA asking people what they thought about in connection to the association and which name suggestions they liked. A year or so later and the new name has arrived. Thankfully the PCA didn’t determine the name by public ballot alone, thereby avoiding the risk of a joke name. Readers wondering about this can remind themselves about the time the UK Natural Environment Research Council ran a website survey asking what a new polar research ship should be called. The vessel was eventually called the RRS Sir David Attenborough rather than the internet’s choice of Boaty McBoatface!

Global Cement Weekly also reflected upon the point Ireland made about the change in the blends of cement being used. The adoption of Portland Limestone Cement (PLC) production in the US contributed to the rise in blended cements shipments. United States Geological Survey (USGS) data shows that shipments of blended cements more than doubled from 26Mt in 2022 to 61Mt in 2024. This compares to shipments of OPC of 41Mt in 2024. This change appears to have been mostly accepted so far, but it is not without its detractors. For example, take this campaign promoting a return to traditional Type I and II cements on ‘performance’ grounds.

As for the US cement market, USGS data shows that shipments of Portland and blended cement fell by about 13% year-on-year to 11.8Mt in the first two months of 2025 from 13.8Mt in the same period in 2024. This was for both domestic shipments and imports. Most of the cement companies that have so far released first quarter financial results for 2025 reported poor weather adversely affecting sales. Holcim noted that sales improved in March 2025. Cemex blamed its lower sales volumes of cement and ready-mixed concrete on the period having one less working day compared to 2024. CRH pointed out in its analysts’ presentation that the first quarter of the year is typically the smallest of the four in terms of sales volumes. The really interesting data may start to emerge in the second and subsequent quarters, as the markets and supply chains start to react to current US trade policy. At the time of writing, widespread tariffs on many countries were announced at the start of April 2025 but then subsequently paused for 90 days.

The American Cement Association has a new name for the 21st Century. The PCA has served it well as a name for over 100 years, but now seems a good time for a change. Whether the future is one of blended cements, carbon capture, a return to OPC or whatever else remains to be seen. Yet the future of construction in the US looks set to involve plenty of cement. There are sure to be challenges along the way. Here’s to the next 100 years.