Displaying items by tag: CO2
Cement Association of Canada and Canadian government to develop roadmap to net-zero carbon concrete
02 June 2021Canada: The Cement Association of Canada (CAC) and the government have published a joint statement detailing their plant to develop a roadmap to net-zero carbon concrete. When launched in December 2021, the roadmap will provide Canadian cement producers with the policies, tools and technologies to contribute to the achievement of net-zero concrete by 2050. The plans will cover areas including: supporting the low-emissions building materials supply chain, building an innovative opportunities framework and engaging stakeholders. According to the statement, the roadmap will offer total potential CO2 reduction of 15Mt by 2030, and 4.0Mt/yr thereafter.
The partnership will establish a CAC-led Industry-Government Working Group in collaboration with the National Research Council the Standards Council of Canada and Innovation, Science and Economic Development. Among its tasks will be the publication of updated environmental product declarations.
UK: Hanson, part of Germany-based HeidelbergCement, has supplied basalt from its Builth Wells, Powys quarry to the world’s first CO2 sequestration field trial in the Brecon Beacons. The trial uses local live soil enriched with basalt for enhanced CO2 sequestration in a reforested 11ha woodland. Enhanced rock weathering takes crushed basalt, a by-product of quarrying, and applies it to the soil to capture CO2 and provide essential nutrients to fertilise trees and the fungi in the soil that support tree growth. The building materials producer says it is a method that has been proven to be successful in sugar beet and pea crops.
Sustainability director Marian Garfield said, “Hanson is focussed on climate protection and carbon reduction, and enhancing biodiversity net gain are two of our key 2030 commitments.” She added, “We are excited to be involved with this project, which aims to determine whether basalt can accelerate the removal of CO2 from the atmosphere in the creation of new woodland and could therefore potentially play a vital role in helping tackle the climate crisis.”
Mexico: Cemex says that it has supplied its low-CO2 Vertua concrete to 786 construction works in Mexico. The El Sol de San Luis newspaper has reported that the volume so far delivered totals 33,000m3. In late May 2021, 398 further projects have placed orders for future deliveries.
Polish Cement Association predicts fall in cement sales in 2021 and reviews challenges of carbon neutrality
07 May 2021Poland: The Polish Cement Association (SPC) has forecast a 2% year-on-year drop in cement sales to 18.5Mt in 2021. President Krzysztof Kieres attributed the fall to growing imports and reduced construction due to a cold start to the year. He predicts that sales will rise again, by 4% to 19.3Mt, in 2022.
The SPC has warned that the industry faces large costs in meeting the European Green Deal’s required 40% CO2 emissions reduction by 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality by 2050. In particular, the local industry noted that the rising European Union (EU) CO2 price has caused a direct increase in electricity prices. It has called on the government and the EU to compensate it for this rise.
Imports of cement also present a key challenge. In 2020, imports of Belarusian cement increased by 80% to 440,000t and imports of Ukrainian cement increased by 50% to 32,000t. The association expressed strong support for the European Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) as a means of protecting the industry against imports both from neighbouring countries outside the EU and via polluting shipping from cement exporters further afield such as Turkey.
Taiheiyo Cement to start CO2 capture project at Kumagaya plant using Carbon Clean technology
21 April 2021Japan: Taiheiyo Cement plans to start a CO2 capture demonstration project at its Kumagaya plant in Kumagaya City, Saitama. It will use technology for CO2 chemical absorption supplied by UK-based Carbon Clean, which has been awarded by Japan-based Marubeni Protechs in Japan. The project will have a capacity of 10t/day and demonstration tests will begin in September 2021. Taiheiyo Cement says that it believes that CO2 recovery technology from cement kiln flue gas will require compact equipment that could be installed in cement plants and that suitable amine solvents for cement kiln flue gas are essential conditions. Its ultimate goal is to establish a technology that can be used to help it reach carbon neutrality by 2050.
The cement producer has been developing this technology as a sole grant recipient of the ‘Development of Carbon Circulation Technology for the Cement Industry,’ a project funded by the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) which was awarded in June 2020. It also launched its internal Carbon Neutral Technology Development Project Team in April 2020, which has led on the project.
Marubeni Protechs, a wholly owned subsidiary of Marubeni Corporation, which invested in Carbon Clean, have been involved in a variety of domestic and international projects involving equipment supply and construction. The project at the Kumagaya plant is expected to be the first CO2 capture plant that Marubeni Protechs and Carbon Clean have introduced in Japan. Marubeni Protechs and Carbon Clean intend to jointly introduce CO2 capture plants in the future.
CarbonBuilt and CarbonCure Technologies win carbon capture and storage design competition
20 April 2021US/Canada: XPrize has named CarbonBuilt and CarbonCure Technologies as the winners of carbon capture and storage (CCS) design prizes worth US$20.0m. The competition ran at two power plants in Wyoming, US and Alberta, Canada. CarbonBuilt won the contest at the Wyoming plant with a concrete-curing based system. The concrete produced has a lower carbon footprint than conventionally produced concrete, according to XPrize. CarbonCure Technologies won the Alberta contest with a design based on carbonating the water used in washing cement trucks. This reportedly formed a concrete-strengthening slurry.
XPrize has partnered with Elon Musk and the Musk Foundation to launch a second round of CCS design prizes worth a total US$100m.
Cement news, abridged
07 April 2021Global Cement Weekly celebrates its 500th edition this week. This corresponds to nearly a decade’s worth of news and comment upon the cement industry, since the first edition went out in early June 2011. Time is brief, so the quick version of all of this is as follows: China; production growth; production overcapacity; grinding; corporate mergers; regionalisation; CO2; digitisation; and coronavirus.
Those looking for the longer version should read Peter Edwards’ review of the 2010s in the December 2019 issue of Global Cement Magazine. Although be warned, few were expecting a global pandemic to rock markets and possibly hasten future trends when that article was written. Those looking for the even longer version should read the last 10 years of the magazine and the website… and then let us know what we missed.
Looking back at the first few editions of Global Cement Weekly brings to mind the LP Hartley quote, “the past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” It’s all very familiar until one comes across the little things that makes one realise how much has actually changed.
For example, countries were imposing import tariffs on cement, companies were buying each other, national cement associations were lobbying hard for their members and cement plants were investing in alternative fuels equipment. All that stuff has been happening continually over the last decade and right into this week, with Russian media announcing who has won the auction to buy Eurocement and LafargeHolcim closing its deal to buy Firestone Building Products. Yet, Lafarge and Holcim were still separate companies and Italcementi was independent in 2011. On the sustainability side, Norcem and its parent company HeidelbergCement Group, with the European Cement Research Academy (ECRA), had just started a partnership agreement with Aker Clean Carbon (ACC) to study post-combustion CO2 capture technology at Norcem’s plant in Brevik, Norway. Jump forward nine years and Norcem signed a deal with Aker Solutions in mid-2020 to order a full scale CO2 capture, liquification and intermediate storage plant at Brevik.
The big numbers from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) show that global cement production grew by 24% to 4.1Bnt in 2020 from 3.3Bnt in 2010. However, the big growth had stopped by around 2013 and production has hovered between 4.0Bnt/yr and 4.2Bnt/yr ever since. Alongside this, Getting the Number Right (GNR) data indicates that net CO2 emissions for cementitous products fell by 4% to 610kg/t in 2018 from 636kg/t in 2010. The former may show a levelling off of production as the Chinese market stabilised in the 2010s but the latter shows the progress that has been made in reducing cement-related CO2 emissions and the scale of the challenge that remains ahead.
Graph 1: Embodied energy versus embodied CO2 of building materials. Source: Hammond & Jones, University of Bath, UK.
Cement industry readers should not lose heart about the future of the industry though, while environmental pressure continues to mount. Graph 1 above shows the embodied CO2 and energy of common building materials. Cement has been rightly identified as a major emitter of CO2 but any society that desires to build strong structures cheaply and at scale requires concrete to do so whilst the data above remains unchallenged. The ratios may change, such as the perennial energy-cost influenced tug-of-war between asphalt and concrete roads, but concrete remains the only game in town. For now. At which point cement production becomes all about reducing the CO2 emissions or capturing them, and determining who exactly pays for this. This then brings us to the present with the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme carbon price of over Euro40/t and other schemes popping up all around the planet. One echo from one of the early editions of Global Cement Weekly was the furore over Australia’s attempt at a carbon tax in the early 2010s. It was repealed in 2014.
One prediction about how the 2020s might be summarised for the cement industry is this: how to get away with pumping out all that CO2? Let’s see what the next decade will bring.
California Nevada Cement Association releases plan for Californian cement industry carbon neutrality by 2045
31 March 2021US: The California Nevada Cement Association (CNCA) has published a plan for the Californian cement industry to meet its target of carbon neutrality by 2045. The plan consists of three pathways, namely: a reduction in process emissions including by alterations to clinker factor and type of additives; an increase in alternative fuel (AF) substitution; and a switch to renewable energy. The association said that the aims are achievable by close stakeholder coordination, constructive public policy engagement and a situational approach based on a flexible portfolio of pathways.
Australia: Calix has reported the completion of a pre-front-end engineering and design (FEED) study of its Leilac-2 carbon capture and storage (CCS) study. Germany-based HeidelbergCement, Mexico-based Cemex and Portugal-based Cimpor assessed the study. The milestone clears the technology for industrial scale implementation at HeidelbergCement’s Hannover integrated cement plant in Germany. The installation aims to capture 100,000t/yr of CO2 at an installation cost of Euro23m (+/-30%). The final investment decision will follow after the completion of FEED in early 2022.
ACC wins Climate Action Programme 2.0° Orientated award
23 March 2021India: The Climate Action Programme 2.0° has awarded ACC its Orientated award for efforts towards CO2 emissions reduction. United News of India has reported that the award assesses companies on the basis of the Confederation of Indian Industry’s climate-maturity model and the Business Excellence Framework. ACC claimed the national award in the energy, mining and heavy industries category.
Managing director and chief executive officer Sridhar Balakrishnan said, "Sustainable construction and environmental conservation are our core corporate objectives. Through our consistent focus on sustainable business practices, we have emerged as one of the companies with the lowest carbon footprints in the cement industry. This award will motivate us further to continue working towards building a greener planet." He added, “As part of global cement major LafargeHolcim, the company is committed to the Net Zero vision of the group and is an industry leader in combating climate change through consistent commitment to sustainable practices. ACC's sustainability mission is defined by the Triple Bottom Line, which signifies accomplishing three interdependent and mutually reinforcing goals of economic development, social development, and environmental protection.” ACC also became a partner of the UK-based Global Cement and Concrete Association (GCCA).