Displaying items by tag: American Cement Association

US: The American Cement Association expects that data centres will need 1Mt of cement by 2028 as investment in artifical intelligence technology rises. 

Data centres are projected to consume 247,000t of cement in 2025 and 860,000t by 2027. There were 5426 operational AI data centres in the US at the end of March 2025, with the number reportedly expected to exceed 6000 by 2027. However, the association warned that there could be challenges in meeting this demand, such as regulatory hurdles and labour shortages.

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projects, Lebec and Mitchell accounted for US$1bn (27%) of a total US$3.73bn in allocated funds that have now been withdrawn.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

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.

US: The Portland Cement Association has changed its name to the American Cement Association (ACA). ACA president and CEO Mike Ireland made the announcement at the IEEE-IAS/PCA Cement Conference 2025, which took place in Birmingham, Alabama. The association will begin launching the new brand identity in June 2025.

“The most important reason for the name change is that in recent years, US cement manufacturers have expanded the types of materials they produce beyond Portland cement, working to develop more lower-emission cements in an effort to decarbonise the industry and increase domestic cement manufacturing capacity. The name ‘Portland Cement Association’ no longer accurately reflects the modern mindset of today’s manufacturers, or the materials they currently produce,” said Ireland.

Lower-emissions cement consumption has grown more than tenfold since 2021 and now accounts for more than 60% of total cement consumed in the US, according to the ACA. In 2024, all 50 state Departments of Transportation approved the use of Portland limestone cement (PLC). PLC reduces the carbon footprint of projects by up to 10%.

Ireland added “Additionally, the rebranding makes it clear that we are a national association that speaks for cement manufacturers across the country.”

The association’s new slogan will be ‘Sustainable Cement for Resilient Concrete’, which ‘summarises the industry’s commitment to staying the course with [the ACA’s] Roadmap to Carbon Neutrality’, according to ACA vice chair of the board Monica Manolas.