Displaying items by tag: CO2

France: CRH subsidiary EQIOM has announced a 9000t/yr reduction in its transport-related CO₂ emissions, down by 5% to 171,000t/yr for the past three years from 180,000t in 2017. It achieved the reduction through its commitment to the FRET21 initiative, a sustainable development strategy of the Agence de l’Environnement et de la Maîtrise de l’Énergie (ADEME) and Association des Utilisateurs de Transport de Fret (AFAT).

The initiative is based on CO₂ reduction around four key activities: loading rate; distance travelled; means of transport; and responsible purchasing. EQIOM launched five initiatives, including increasing laden returns of trucks to reduce empty transport to 28%, commissioning four new natural gas and bioethanol-powered vehicles and increasing rail freight to 89%.

EQIOM logistics manager Jérôme Becamel said, "As in the rest of the country, our transport activity has been impacted by the social situation, particularly strikes on the roads and in the railways. However, we are delighted with the results obtained for this first challenge even if we were unable to reach our ambitions 100%. We are only more motivated and we will be stepping up our efforts over the next three years.”

Norway: Norcem, a subsidiary of HeidelbergCement, has signed an agreement with Aker Solutions to order a CO₂ capture, liquification and intermediate storage plant at its integrated Brevik cement plant. The final decision for the project depends on funding from the Norwegian government, which is expected to approve the unit in its national budget for 2021.

The project will use Aker Solutions’ Advanced Carbon Capture (ACC) technology and its S26 amine solvent. Once complete the unit will capture 0.4Mt/yr of CO₂. This will be transported to the Northern Lights project for permanent storage offshore beneath the North Sea.

Switzerland/US: LafargeHolcim has announced the extension of its partnership with Solidia Technologies to mid-2020. Cash News has reported that the partnership, which has seen a 30% reduction in LafargeHolcim’s overall CO₂ emissions since its formation in mid-2013, aims to achieve a 70% reduction in the producer’s carbon footprint.

Belgium: Cembureau, the European Cement Association, has published its new Carbon Neutrality Roadmap, setting out its ambition to reach net zero emissions along the cement and concrete value chain by 2050. The roadmap examines how CO₂ emissions can be reduced at each stage of the value chain – clinker, cement, concrete, construction and (re)carbonation – to achieve zero net emissions by 2050. It quantifies the role of each technology in providing CO₂ emissions savings, making concrete political and technical recommendations to support this objective.

“As Europe begins its green recovery, the significance of this moment for our sector is huge. This is our response to the EU Green Deal – we have a plan and are ready to make the leap.” said Raoul de Parisot, president of Cembureau. The association has identified areas where it says it requires decisive political action from the European Union (EU). These include: the development of a pan-European CO₂ transportation and storage network; action on circular economy to support the use of non-recyclable waste and biomass waste in cement production; policies to reduce European building’s CO₂ footprint, based on a life-cycle approach, that incentivise the market uptake of low-carbon cements; a ‘level’ playing field on carbon, regulatory certainty and an industrial transformation agenda.

Cembureau says it aspires to be in line with the Paris Agreement’s two degrees scenario, reducing CO₂ emissions by 30% for cement and 40% down the value chain. Its chief executive Koen Coppenholle added that, “Carbon neutrality along our full value-chain will be a massive effort, but we are confident we can achieve it. Our sector has made significant progress and, with the right tools and support from the EU, we can go much further.”

Norway: Private accreditation body DNVGL has certified Aker Solutions’ 400,000t/yr carbon capture and storage (CCS) system installation at Germany-based HeidelbergCement subsidiary Norcem’s 1.2Mt/yr integrated Brevik plant in Telemark as safe. HeidelbergCement Northern Europe director of sustainability and alternative fuels Per Brevik said, “The promising results from pilot testing in Brevik give us confidence that realisation of the full-scale capture plant will be successful. We trust that the project risk related to novel technology elements is low.”

Following an 18-month test of the partial installation, the certification ensures that the full-scale project will receive government funding.

Hungary: Italy-based Entsorga has completed the installation of an automated alternative fuel (AF) line at a Hungarian cement plant.The upgrade consists of an Entsorga Spider crane and Pelican power system which will be able to maintain a continuous feed to the plant’s calcination system 24 hours a day.

Entsorga CEO Francesco Galanzino said, “Bringing a commission to a successful conclusion in the middle of the maximum intensity period of the coronavirus crisis has been a great satisfaction. The cement plant will make significant savings in CO₂ emissions.”

Spain: A 25% alternative fuel (AF) substitution rate has accounted for a 9650t reduction in CO₂ emissions at Cementos Cosmos’ 0.7Mt/yr Oural, Galicia plant, lowering the specific CO2 emissions of its clinker by 45kg/t. A main constituent of the AF mix was olive stones. Cementos Cosmos Oural plant managing director Jaime Santoalla said, “At Cementos Cosmos, we accept our responsibility to meet the global objectives of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.”

Cement and concrete products with sustainability credentials have increased in recent years as societies start to demand decarbonisation. In spite of the recent drop in the European Union (EU) Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) price, there has been a trend in recent years in the construction industry towards offerings with better environmental credentials. Indeed, this week’s position paper from Cembureau on a carbon border mechanism concerns directly the growth of these kinds of products within Europe. Typically, the higher profile projects have been slag cement or concrete implementations such as Hanson’s use of its Regen cement substitute in a London sewer project or David Ball Group’s Cemfree concrete in a road project also in the UK. In this short review we’ll take a selective look at a few of the so-called low carbon cement and concrete products currently available.

Table 1: Some examples of methods to reduce embodied CO₂ in cement and concrete. Note - the product examples are selective. In some cases many other products are available.

Looking at cement first, the easiest way for many producers to bring a lower carbon product to market has been to promote cements made using secondary cementitious materials (SCM) such as granulated blast furnace slag or fly ash. These types of cements have a long history, typically in specialist applications and/or in relation to ease of supply. For example, cement producers in eastern India often manufacture slag cements owing to the number of local steel plants. However, cement producers have more recently started to publicise their environmental credentials as they reduce the clinker factor of the final product. Alongside this though, in Europe especially, a number of so-called low carbon cement producers have appeared on the scene such as EcoCem and Hoffman Green Technologies. These newer producers tend to offer SCM cement products or other low carbon ones built around a grinding model. It is likely that their businesses have benefitted from tightening EU environmental legislation. How far cement producers can pivot to SCM cement products is contentious given that slag and fly ash are finite byproducts of other industries that are also under pressure to decarbonise. Although it should be noted that other SCMs such as pozzolans exist.

As will be seen below a few of the methods to reduce embodied CO₂ in cement and concrete can be used in both materials. SCMs are no exception and hold a long history in concrete usage. As mentioned above David Ball Group sells Cemfree a concrete product that contains no cement. Harsco Environmental, a minerals management company, invested US$3m into Carbicrete, a technology start-up working on a cement-free concrete, in late 2019.

Limestone calcined clay cements are the next set of products that are starting to make an appearance through the work of the Swiss-government backed LC3 project, more commercial offerings like FutureCem from Cementir and H-EVA from Hoffman Green Technologies and today’s announcement about ThyssenKrupp’s plans to fit the Kribi cement plant in Cameroon with its Polysius activated clay system. They too, like SCM cements, reduce the clinker factor of the cement. The downside is that, as in the name, the clay element needs to be calcined requiring capital investment, although LC3 make a strong case in their literature about how fast these costs can be recouped in a variety of scenarios.

Calcium silicate cements offer reduced process emissions by decreasing the lime content of the clinker lowering the amount of CO₂ released and bringing down the temperature required in the kiln to make the clinker. Solidia offers its calcium silicate cement as part of a two-part system with a CO₂ cured concrete. In the US LafargeHolcim used Solidia’s product in a commercial project in mid-2019 at a New Jersey paver and block plant. Solidia’s second core technology is using CO₂ to cure concrete and reducing water usage. They are not alone here as Canada’s CarbonCure Technologies uses CO₂ in a similar way with their technology. In their case they focus more on CO₂ mineralisation. In Germany, Schwenk Zement backed the Celitement project, which developed a hydraulic calcium hydro silicate based product that does not use CO₂ curing. Celitement has since become part of Schwenk Zement.

Solidia isn’t the only company looking at two complementary technologies along the cement-concrete production chain. A number of companies are looking at recycling concrete and demolition waste. Generally this splits into coarse waste that is used as an aggregate substitute in concrete and fine waste that is used to make cement. LafargeHolcim has Evopact for the coarse waste and Susteno for the fine. HeidelbergCement has EcoCrete for the coarse and is researching the use of fines. Closing the loop for heavy building material producers definitely seems like the way to go at the moment and this view is reinforced by the involvement of the two largest multinational producers.

Of the rest of the other low carbon cement methods detailed in table 1 these cover other non-Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC) such as geopolymer and calcium sulphoaluminate cements. The former are a type of alkali activated binder and generally lack common standards. The latter are similar to slag cements in that they are established specialist products with lower CO₂ emissions than OPC.

With concrete when trying to make a low carbon product the first choice is whether to choose a low-carbon cement as the binder or even not to use cement at all in the case of Regen or Cemfree. From here the next step is to simply use less cement in a concrete mixture. There are a number of ways to do this from optimising aggregate gradation, following performance specifications more closely, using strength tests like maturity methods and generally adhering to quality control protocols better to deliver more consistency. Read the Mineral Production Association (MPA) publication Specifying Sustainable Concrete for more detail on this. Using concrete admixtures can also help make concrete more sustainable by improving quality and performance at construction sites through the use of plasticisers and accelerators, by decreasing embodied carbon through the use of water reducers and by improving the whole life performance of concretes. The use of locally-sourced aggregates is also worth noting here since it can reduce associated transport CO₂ emissions.

More novel methods of reducing embodied CO₂ emissions in concrete include the use of geopolymer concrete in the case of Zeobond Group’s E-Crete or adding graphene as Concrene does. Like geopolymer cements, geopolymer concretes are relatively new and lack common standards. Products like Concrene, meanwhile, remain currently at the startup level. Finally, if all else fails, offsetting the CO₂ released by a cement or concrete product is always an option. This is what Cemex has done with its Vertua Ultra Zero product. The first 70% reduction in embodied CO₂ is gained through the use of geopolymer cement. Then the remaining 30% reduction is achieved through a carbon offsetting scheme via a carbon neutral certification verified by the Carbon Trust.

As can be seen, a variety of methods exist for cement and concrete producers to reduce the embodied CO₂ of their products and call them ‘low-carbon.’ For the moment most remain in the ‘novelty section’ but as legislators promote and specifiers look for sustainable construction they continue to become more mainstream. What has been interesting to note from this short study is that some companies are looking at multiple solutions along the production and supply chain whilst others are concentrating on single ones. The companies looking at multiple methods range from the biggest building material producers like LafargeHolcim and HeidelbergCement to smaller newer ones like Solidia and Hoffman Green Technologies. Also of note is that many of these products have existed already in various forms for a long time like SCM cements and concretes or the many ways concretes can be made more sustainable through much simpler ways such as changing aggregate sourcing or working more efficiently. In many cases once markets receive sufficient stimulus it seems likely that low carbon cement and concrete products will proliferate.

Global Cement is researching a market report on low carbon cement and concrete. If readers have any comments to make please contact us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Japan: Taiheiyo Cement has set out the measures by which it aims to achieve its July 2019 target to ‘reduce net CO₂ emissions per unit of cement production’ by 80% between 2000 and 2050. The measures consist of: the introduction of energy-saving equipment, the promotion of alternative fuels (AFs) and the development of lower-CO₂ cements, accounting for a minimum 15% reduction; development and introduction of new technologies to the production process, targeting especially indirect emissions by modernising energy sources, accounting for a minimum 15% reduction; assumption of future technologies, accounting for a minimum 50% reduction.

EU: The coronavirus has caused emissions credits sold under the Emissions Trading Scheme to take a price dive to Euro16.31/t of CO₂ on 19 March 2020, down by 36% month-on-month from Euro25.66/t on 19 February 2020 and 22% year-on-year from Euro21.01/t on 19 March 2020. Environmental consultancy firm Energy Aspects said, “As the COVID-19 outbreak is now spreading rapidly in Europe, it will start to reduce emissions as lockdowns are put in place in multiple countries,” according to Reuters. The European Commission has forecasted a 1.0% contraction in the EU economy in 2020, revising its February estimate of 1.4% growth year-on-year. This would correspond to a reduction in industrial CO₂ emissions of between 10.0Mt and 20.0Mt by the end of year.