Displaying items by tag: GCCA

Egypt: Cemex’s chief executive officer (CEO) Fernando A González was part of the First Movers Coalition panel at the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27) in Sharm El Sheikh on 8 November 2022. He participated alongside the World Economic Forum’s president Borge Brende, Microsoft president Brad Smith, ReNew chair and managing director Sumant Sinha, Volvo Group chief purchasing officer Andrea Fuder and US Special Climate Envoy John Kerry.

Cemex is a founding member of the First Movers Coalition, a partnership between the World Economic Forum and the US Office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, John Kerry. It is the only buyers’ club working to scale new technologies across the heavy industry and heavy-duty transport sectors.

As a First Movers Coalition member, Cemex committed to making 32% of its heavy-duty transport purchases zero emissions by 2030. This commitment aligns with the company’s ambitious goals of reducing transport carbon emissions by 30% by 2030 and becoming net zero by 2050, part of its Future in Action program to achieve sustainable excellence and become a net zero CO₂ company.

This commitment is particularly challenging, as zero-emission heavy-duty transport is presently unavailable at scale. At the panel, Fernando A Gonzalez talked about how collaboration and innovation are at the core of his company’s efforts. Cemex is already piloting fully electric concrete mixer trucks with partners like Volvo. It is also investing in transition technologies such as natural gas, replacing 200 diesel trucks with this lower-emission alternative in 2022.

Cemex will a host a discussion panel called Working Together to Decarbonise the Construction Value Chain, to be moderated by Thomas Guillot, chief executive of the Global Cement and Concrete Association (GCCA), on 10 November 2022. The panelists will include Diane Hoskins (Gensler Co), Aniruddha Sharma (Carbon Clean), Hubertus Meinecke (BCG) and Adair Turner (Energy Transitions Commission), in addition to Cemex’s Fernando A González.

Gabon: The Global Cement and Concrete Association (GCCA) and the United Cities and Local Government of Africa (UCLG Africa) have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) at Africa Climate Week 2022 that is intended to collaboration towards decarbonising cement and concrete industries in Africa. The MOU was signed by UCLG Africa’s Secretary General Jean-Pierre Elong-Mbassi and the GCCA’s Director of Concrete and Sustainable Construction Andrew Minson. The agreement was made during Africa Climate Week 2022 in Gabon and sets out how both parties will work together to strengthen stakeholder advocacy towards net zero and encourage local governments to take policy action towards decarbonisation targets.

Through this agreement the two organisations will work together towards building sustainable and resilient cities, with a focus on an initial first five pilot cities to scope out opportunities and challenges. The two parties will jointly organise events that strengthen advocacy for the involvement of local governments in decarbonisation. Both parties will also aim to help make low carbon cement manufacturing more attractive to investors in Africa, as well as stimulate demand for low-carbon concrete products and to cultivate a positive environment for circular and Net Zero manufacturing across Africa.

To reach these objectives, both parties will work to ensure African cities have more capacity to embrace innovative cement products and that these cities can be mobilised effectively to join the Net Zero by 2050 efforts. GCCA and UCLG Africa will also look to build stakeholder support for multi-level governance in urban planning and housing across Africa.

UK: The World Economic Forum and the Global Cement and Concrete Association (GCCA), in collaboration with Boston Consulting Group (BCG), have released a Mission Possible Partnership Report which identifies the nations that are prioritising green public procurement. These are the Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, France, the UK, and select US states. The report titled ‘Low-Carbon Concrete and Construction - A Review of Green Public Procurement Programmes’ identifies a framework for how these six countries are demonstrating leadership in green public procurement of concrete and construction.

The first component of the framework is the foundation, which includes establishing standards for reporting emissions, databases and tools for tracking emissions and establishes baselines. The second part of the framework, procurement polices, builds upon and reinforces the foundation by setting policies that require environmental disclosures, mandate carbon limits, and incentivise low-carbon design, and use of low-carbon materials.

Approximately 7% of global carbon emissions come from cement, and about half of the cement used globally is procured by the public sector. Governments also spend US$11tn/yr on procurement, about 12% of global gross domestic product (GDP) and regulate the construction industry via building codes. Therefore, governments play a critical role in driving demand to decarbonise the concrete and construction sector to achieve net zero goals.

Matt Rogers, the chief executive officer of the Mission Possible Project said “The demand signals in the market for green industrial products are among the most important opportunities to accelerate the path to net zero across industrial sectors. For material sectors like cement and concrete, government procurement practices will play an especially important role. This report summarises the current best practices in government procurement for green cement across multiple markets. Insights like these provide the government procurement professionals practical tools and technical insights that they can use today to create demand-pull for the most innovative low carbon cement and concrete offerings in the market.”

World: The Global Cement and Concrete Association (GCCA) has named its first six startups to receive backing under the inaugural Innovandi Open Challenge. The startups have partnered with GCCA members to help increase cement’s sustainability towards achieving net zero CO₂ concrete production by 2050. This will lead to the formation of six consortia to further test, develop and deploy their new technologies.

Carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) startups CarbonOrO, MOF Technologies and Saipem, all based in Europe, are among the participants. GCCA members are currently involved in dozens of pilot projects and aim to have 10 industrial-scale carbon capture plants installed by 2030. Other startups Carbon Upcycling Technologies and Fortera, from Canada and the US respectively, use captured CO₂ to produce low-carbon cement and cementitious materials, while UK-based Coomtech has developed a low-cost drying technology using turbulent air.

GCCA CEO Thomas Guillot said “It’s a proud moment to see the industry coming together to support such innovative start-ups on their journey. Our member companies were greatly impressed by their ambition to be a key part of the climate solution. The programme is another big step forward towards unlocking innovation to help us achieve our net zero goal.” He continued “As the need for resilient and sustainable communities to support a growing global population becomes more pressing , cement and concrete will be essential to providing the infrastructure and buildings that society needs. Achieving net zero concrete relies on a number of different groups playing their part, and as an industry we’re looking outwards as well as inwards, to see how start-ups like these can support our goals.”