Displaying items by tag: CO2

France: Bénédicte de Bonnechose, the president of the French cement industry union (SFIC), says that country’s cement market is expected to grow by 3% in 2018. She made the comments whilst unveiling local CO₂ reduction targets by 2050, according to the Agence France Presse. The local industry recorded growth of 4% in 2017. She described 2018 as a ‘positive recovery’ with sustained growth following a good first half.

SFIC forecasts that new low-clinker cement products will enter the market by mid-2020. These products include EMC II / CM, EMC VI and LC3 types of cement. These should reduce the CO₂ emissions related to current sold cement products by 35%. Other CO₂ capture initiatives including Oxyfuel, Leiliac and calcium looping cleanker technologies were also mentioned.

Well, it turns out that the European cement industry wasn’t kidding when it raised the risks of the climate mitigation on the sector. This week three (!) integrated plants have been earmarked for closure.

Cementa in Sweden said that it was considering closing its Degerhamn plant due to increased environmental regulations. Today, local press in Spain is reporting that Cemex España is planning to shut down two of its plants. These are plants in different parts of Europe with different local market dynamics but both are within the European Union (EU). That’s three plants closing out of 219 in the EU, or a loss of around 1% of production capacity.

Last week’s column on the United Nations’ (UN) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on Global Warming raised the way the cement sector is tackling climate change and the existing and impending legislation. President of the German Cement Works Association (VDZ) Christian Knell’s opening words at the VDZ Congress in September 2018 seem prescient. He said, “To be able to realise our efforts in terms of climate protection and at the same time not to lose competitiveness, we need research policy-related support for our investment in breakthrough technologies and the corresponding demonstration projects.” The add-on was that the industry needed to focus on how the development of carbon abatement technologies can meet the 2050 climate goals and, specifically, that suitable boundary conditions would have to be created. The press releases accompanying his speech emphasised that, “on-going trends in European emissions trading and the ‘rapidly increasing’ price of CO₂ were already today leading to considerable costs for cement manufacturers.”

These words are similar to the comments Albert Scheuer, a board member of HeidelbergCement, made at the Innovation in Industrial Carbon Capture Conference early in 2018 about dividing the mounting environmental costs of cement and concrete between producers and society in general. Considering how much cementitious building materials most people use throughout their lives compared to the relative low price of cement, this argument carries some weight. In addition, the sustainability credentials of concrete buildings through longer lifespan and durability through extreme weather events is another argument that industry advocates such as the Portland Cement Association (PCA) in the US have been hawking in recent years.

Cementa, a subsidiary of HeidelbergCement, blamed anticipated tightening of environmental regulations for its decision. Although it said that the plant had made improvements over the years, the expected difficulty (read: cost) to make further improvements was becoming too hard. Shifting production to the company’s other two plants in the region, Slite on Gotland and Brevik in Norway, will reduce CO₂ emissions by 260,000t/yr.

In Spain, the news from Cemex follows a half-year report from Oficemen, the local cement association, that predicted growth for the year but not as fast as previously expected. The problem was that continued declines in the export market, the 13th decline month-by-month in a row, offset the domestic growth. Oficement president Jesús Ortiz also took time to blame rising electricity costs, expected to rise by 20% year-on-year by the end of 2018.

Market issues in Spain aren’t in doubt, but the real question for both Sweden and Spain is whether EU CO₂ legislation right now is causing cement producers to shut plants. The CO₂ emissions allowance price hit a high of Euro22/t in September 2018, the highest price in a decade. Allowances have stayed below Euro10/t since 2011 and the price has more than doubled in 2018. Throw in the mood music of the IPCC and the trend seems irresistible. How many more plants in Europe are at risk to shut next? No doubt the European cement producers have charts marking the viability of their plants against the CO₂ price. This would be a very interesting graph to get our hands on.

The 2nd FutureCem Conference on CO₂ reduction strategies for the cement industry will take place in May 2019 in London, UK

Spain: Cemex España is preparing to close its cement plants at Gádor in Almería and Lloseta in Baleares. It has blamed reduced demand for cement and European regulations on CO₂ emissions for the decision, according to the Cinco Días newspaper. The closures will affect 200 employees and the cement producer is has started to hold union discussions. Cemex will retain integrated plants at Morata de Jalón, Alicante, Alcanar, Castillejo Anover and Buñol.

One graph the United Nations’ (UN) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on Global Warming of 1.5°C didn’t include this week was what happens if the world just doesn’t bother. It’s probably just as well since warming of 1.5°C is likely to happen between 2030 and 2052 at the current rate of climate mitigation efforts. If they had included such as diagram, it likely would have had a ominous red line hurtling skywards like a rollercoaster track just before the screams start.

The giant paper study is really about comparing and contrasting the different impacts and responses to a 1.5°C and a 2°C rise. One taste of what the higher rise threatens is, “limiting global warming to 1.5°C instead of 2°C could result in around 420 million fewer people being frequently exposed to extreme heatwaves, and about 65 million fewer people being exposed to exceptional heatwaves."

The cement industry gets a look-in with an acknowledgment that the sector contributes a ‘small’ amount (5%) of total industrial CO₂ emissions. It then breaks the entire industrial sector’s mitigation strategies down to (a) reductions in the demand, (b) energy efficiency, (c) increased electrification of energy demand, (d) reducing the carbon content of non-electric fuels and (e) deploying innovative processes and application of carbon capture and storage (CCS).

Speaking generally, phasing out coal, electrification and saving energy in mechanisms like waste heat recovery is predicted to get industry only so far. Yet from here even skirting over 1.5°C but below 2°C is ‘difficult to achieve’ without the, “major deployment of new sustainability-oriented low-carbon industrial processes.” Such new process include full oxy-fuelling kilns for clinker production, which have not been tested at the industrial scale yet. Likewise, CCS is seen as a major part of keeping warming below 2°C with a target of 3 Gt CO₂/yr by 2050. Some reality is present though when the report says that the development of such projects has been slow, since only two large-scale industrial CCS projects outside of oil and gas processing are in operation and that cost is high. It even posits a value of up to US$188t/CO₂ (!) for the cost of CO₂ avoided from a Global CCS Institute report.

None of this is new to cement producers. The real debate is how to get there without wiping out the industry. In his address to the recent VDZ conference, Christian Knell, the president of the German Cement Works Association (VDZ), highlighted that meeting climate change goals was leading to ‘considerable’ costs for the cement industry. He then called for policy-related support to on-going research projects into CO₂ mitigation technology.

The bit that the IPCC doesn’t go into is how much those five steps to the industrial sector will cost cement producers and, vitally, who will pay for it. For example, taking a cement plant’s co-processing rate to 70% and building a waste-heat recovery system, might cost around US$30m. The Low Emissions Intensity Lime And Cement (LEILAC) Consortium’s Calix’s direct CO₂ separation process pilot at the Lixhe cement plant in Belgium has funding of about Euro20m. Rolling all three of these measures out to the world’s 2300 cement plants would cost over US$100bn and it would take more than a decade. Beware, the financial figures here are rough estimates and may be way out. The point remains that the implementation costs will not be trivial.

Industry advocates have started in recent years to push back against the climate lobby by highlighting the essential nature of concrete to the modern world. The IPCC barely mentioned this aspect of cement’s contribution to society suggesting recycling, using more renewable materials, like wood, and resorting to the mitigation strategies detailed above. Building new cities out of wood is not inconceivable but CCS seems more likely to solve the climate problem at this stage. Manufacturing the cement that becomes concrete may create CO₂ emissions but it has also built the modern world and raised living standards universally. No cement means no civilisation. There is, at present, no alternative.

Instead of leaving this discussion at an impasse, it is worth reflecting on the last week in the industry’s news. An Indian cement company is importing fly ash, several companies are opening or preparing cement grinding plants, a coal ash extraction pilot project is running, a waste heat recovery unit has opened at a plant in Turkey and a producer is getting ready to co-process tyres as a fuel in Oman. All of these stories are proof that change is happening. The trick for policymakers is to keep prodding the cement sector in this direction without disrupting the good things the industry does for people’s lives through sustainable housing and infrastructure.

The November 2018 issue of Global Cement Magazine will include an exclusive article by Mahendra Singhi, the CEO of Dalmia Cement, about his company’s CO₂ mitigation efforts.

The 2nd FutureCem Conference on CO₂ reduction strategies for the cement industry will take place in May 2019 in London, UK.

Germany: Christian Knell, the president of the German Cement Works Association (VDZ), has warned that meeting climate change goals was leading to ‘considerable’ costs for the cement industry. He said that ‘suitable boundary conditions would have to be created’ for climate change issues and noted that on-going trends in European emissions trading and the ‘rapidly’ increasing price of CO2 were leading to mounting costs. “To be able to realise our efforts in terms of climate protection and at the same time not lose competitiveness, we need research policy-related support for our investment in breakthrough technologies and the corresponding demonstration projects,” said Knell.

Knell made the comments during the opening ceremony of the 8th International VDZ Congress 2018 in Duesseldorf. He identified climate protection and digitalisation as key issues for the future of the industry.

Germany: Environmental data from the German Cement Works Association (VDZ) show that average nitrogen dioxide emissions (NO₂) from cement production dropped below 300mg/Nm³ in 2017. The value has more than halved since 2000. Other data from the ‘Environmental Data of the German Cement Industry 2017’ report shows that fossil fuels usage by the cement industry fell to 35% in 2017 compared to 45.6% in 2008.

"By consistently promoting the development of clinker-efficient cements, German cement manufacturers are noticeably reducing the carbon footprint as compared to traditional Portland cements," said VDZ President Christian Knell.

Knell also warned that the costs of carbon capture technologies should not be allowed to jeopardise the competitiveness of domestic cement manufacturers and give rise to ‘undesirable’ carbon leakage effects. The industry is currently researching methods to further reduce CO₂ emissions such as carbon capture, storage and utilisation techniques, but it is dependent on external financing.

18 German cement manufacturers with a total of 46 cement plants are members of the VDZ. The local industry employs around 8000 people.

India: Mahendra Singhi, the group chief executive officer (CEO) of Dalmia Cement, says that the company aims to be carbon negative by 2040. Singhi made the announcement at the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco, US, according to the Indo-Asian News Service. The cement producer is planning to increase its low-carbon product portfolio and use more ‘green’ fuels and raw materials in all of its 14 plants in India.

Dalmia Cement is the first Indian cement company to join RE 100 and it is committed to a target of 100% renewable electricity use. Singhi said that the major challenge is to convert the climate risks into business opportunities while sustaining business growth for the benefit of present as well as future stakeholders. Singhi was previously the Indian co-chair of the Cement Sustainability Initiative (CSI).

Singhi said that Dalmia Group has been able to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to 526kg/t of cement on a group average and to 342kg/t in its eastern operations. According to the CDP (formerly Carbon Disclosure Project) cement sector report in April 2018, Dalmia Bharat achieved the first rank in CDP's low carbon transition league.

Canada: The government has made a proposed new carbon tax easier for large-scale industrial emitters such as cement and steel producers. Originally the new legislation proposed imposing a levy on around 30% of a company’s CO₂ emissions from the start of 2018, according to the Globe and Mail newspaper. However, the revision has reduced the tax on so-called vulnerable industries with the cement and steel sectors only having to pay 10%. The levy will start at US$15/t in January 2018, rising to around US$40/t in 2022.

The decision to soften the carbon tax follows lobbying by the affected industries. The tax applies to provinces that do not have existing carbon emission controls, such as cap-and-trade schemes, that meets the central government’s standards. The provincial government of Ontario, which contains six of the country’s 17 integrated cement plants, recently decided to leave its own carbon pricing system. It will be subject to the new rules. Saskatchewan will also be affected.

Germany: HeidelbergCement has highlighted occupational safety and research into CO₂ reduction as priorities in its sustainability report for 2017. It reduced its accident frequency rate for employees with at least one lost working day per 1,000,000 hours across cement, ready-mixed concrete and aggregates to 1.8 in 2017 from 2.2 in 2016.

“This represents a significant improvement. A large number of locations have now been accident-free for several years, while others have seen drastically reduced accident rates. Nevertheless, serious accidents still occurred in 2017. We will therefore further intensify our efforts to prevent accidents on a permanent basis,” said Bernd Scheifele, the chairman of HeidelbergCement.

The building materials producer has also singled out its commitment to reduce its specific CO₂ emissions by 30% in 2030 compared with 1990. It plans to support this by continually increasing the proportion of alternative raw materials and fuels and, wherever possible, to make its production processes more efficient. In addition, HeidelbergCement has invested in research programmes on carbon capture and its utilisation as a raw material. In 2017, it spent Euro141m on research and technology, an increase of around Euro24m from 2016.

Following HeidelbergCement’s acquisition of Italcementi in 2016 its CO₂ emissions have increased. Its specific net CO₂ emissions (per tonne of cementitious material) rose by 1.9% year-on-year to 609kg Co₂/t in 2017 from 598 kg Co₂/t in 2016. Its overall proportion of alternative fuels has also decreased slightly dropping to 20.8% from 21.4%. However, its specific energy consumption for cement and clinker continued to fall in 2017.

UK: Hanson UK’s sustainability report for 2017 shows that its CO₂ emissions per tonne of product have fallen by 7.2% to reach the lowest level for five years. However, the subsidiary of Germany’s HeidelbergCement may face issues meeting its target of a 10% reduction by 2020 from its 2010 figures as its CO₂ emissions from production have rise by 5.7% since 2010.

Overall, the company described 2017 as a year of ‘solid’ progress. It passed its 2020 targets for reducing both mains water use and waste to landfill. The number of lost time injuries remained static at 21, but the frequency rate was down on the prior year and there was a three-month unbroken spell without a lost time injury. The building materials producer also launched HeidelbergCement’s Sustainability Commitments 2030, including a set of targets for the group to achieve by 2020.