Displaying items by tag: Sustainability

Japan: Sumitomo Osaka Cement has joined the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Decisions (TCFD) Consortium. The consortium is committed to facilitating effective and efficient disclosure of climate-related corporate information and their use by financial institutions. As a member, Sumitomo Osaka Cement will conduct scenario analysis on the climate change impacts of all its businesses. This includes its cement business, which the company says accounts for the majority of its CO₂ emissions.

South Korea: Sampyo Group has announced a planned investment of US$171m before 2030 to reduce Scope 1 and 2 CO₂ emissions by 35% over the period from an August 2021 baseline. The parent company of Sampyo Cement plans to achieve this in the first phase by increased its use of alternative fuels, improving energy efficiency, introducing low-carbon raw materials such as fly ash and developing sustainable products. The company is targeting net zero CO₂ production by 2050.

India: The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) and the Global Cement and Concrete Association (GCCA) India have signed a memorandum of understanding to accelerate sustainable development of cement and concrete sectors. Under the agreement, TERI will provide its domain expertise and knowledge to support GCCA India's work to achieve sustainability in the Indian cement and concrete sector, according to the Press Trust of India. The collaboration will see TERI's involvement in GCCA India work programs while GCCA India and its members will support TERI's projects on technology innovation, energy efficiency enhancement, and resource efficiency implementation.

"The demand for cement and concrete will only increase in the decades to come due to population growth and urbanisation. Therefore, reducing CO₂ emissions in the cement and concrete industry is critically important,” said Mahendra Singhi, chairman of GCCA India. He added that working with stakeholders across sectors and with civil society would be essential to reaching the association’s sustainability goals.

Denmark: 29 consortium members, including Aalborg Portland Cement, Aker Carbon Capture and INEOS, have signed up to phase two of the Greensand carbon capture and storage pilot project. Proof of concept planning is now underway with a potential start date of around late 2021 subject to securing funding from the government’s Energy Technology Development and Demonstration Program. If successful an offshore injection pilot is scheduled for late 2022.

A majority of the Danish Parliament decided in December 2020 to set aside a special funding pool to support a CO2 storage pilot project, aiming to investigate the reservoir-CO₂ interaction in the Danish North Sea. This pilot project, if designed correctly, could form the basis for a decision, to enable CO₂ storage by 2025.

Mads Weng Gade, Head of Country, Denmark and Commercial Director INEOS Energy said, “We are taking this step by step. We now have the consortium in place, and if we are successful in receiving ongoing support from the Danish Government and advisory board, Greensand will be able to take another important step forward in supporting the Danish Climate Strategy.”

Germany: Holcim Deutschland says it has joined Madaster, an online registry for materials and products. Under the scheme, buildings are registered, including the materials and products that were used in their construction. This is intended to make the reuse or recycling of the materials easier, to encourage ‘smart’ design and to eliminate waste. Thorsten Hahn, the chief executive officer of Holcim Deutschland said “The use of alternative raw materials and the closing of product cycles are among the greatest challenges in the construction industry. We owe it to future generations to use the resources that are available to us responsibly and sensibly.”

India: Holcim subsidiary ACC has signed the Business Ambition for 1.5°C pledge and joined the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change’s Race to Zero campaign. The producer partnered with CDP India’s Science-Based Targets (SBT) Incubator programme to develop its targets. It has committed to reduce its cement’s Scope 1 emissions by 21% to 409kg/t from 511kg/t and its Scope 2 emissions by 48% per tonne between 2018 and 2030. In 2020, the Scope 1 emissions of ACC’s cement were 493kg/t.

CDP India executive director Shankar Venkateswaran said, “CDP India’s SBT Incubator supports companies in India to align with these targets. By committing to science-based emissions reduction targets, ACC has positioned itself as an industry leader, showing the way for the sector’s transformation to a low carbon sustainable future. We believe that this will encourage more companies on their Net Zero Journey.”

Colombia: London Stock Exchange Group subsidiary FTSE Russell has listed Grupo Argos subsidiary Cementos Argos among the top companies on its FTSE4Good environmental, social and governance sustainability index. The index evaluates company performance across 150 indicators including water efficiency, health and safety, labour standards, human rights, fiscal transparency and anti-corruption.

Legal and Sustainability Vice President María Isabel Echeverri said, “We are very excited about being included in the FTSE4Good because it recognises the importance of sustainability management and value creation for us, as well as the efforts we have been making to communicate our goals in a transparent and timely manner in environmental, social commitments and government aspects.”

Mexico: Cemex has supplied over 100,000m³ of its Vertua concrete product range to projects in its home country. Deliveries reached 113,000m³ to 1700 projects by the end of July 2021. Outstanding orders exceed 500 projects. The company launched the low and net-zero CO₂ concrete products in early 2021.

Mexico: Cemex has signed the Business Ambition for 1.5°C commitment led by the We Mean Business Coalition in partnership with the Science Based Targets initiative and the United Nations (UN) Global Compact. With this commitment in place the company has also joined the Race to Zero campaign of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. All members of the Race to Zero coalition pledge to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 at the latest, in line with global efforts in limiting global warming to 1.5°C. Cemex says that these objectives align with its Future in Action programme to reduce its carbon footprint by delivering net-zero concrete globally by 2050.

“Cemex’s commitment to Climate Action runs deep and we are excited to partner with prominent global organisations to deliver on this challenge. Implementing climate solutions require active collaboration between industry, governments, non-governmental organisations and multilateral agencies, and we intend to continue to play an active role in these efforts. We encourage others to join us in this important challenge”, said Fernando A. González, the chief executive officer of Cemex.

In addition, Cemex has submitted its new 2030 target of below 475Kg CO₂/t of cementitious product for validation to the Science-Based Targets initiative as part of its commitment to fulfil its ambition of carbon neutrality by 2050.

Holcim has started to unify its low carbon cement product range this week with the launch of its ECOPlanet label globally. The products are already available in Germany, Romania, Canada, Switzerland, Spain, France and Italy. The plan is to extend this to 15 countries by the end of 2021 and then to double its ‘market presence’ by the end of 2022.

The headline news is that the range will include what Holcim says is the world’s first cement product with 20% recycled construction and demolition waste. This appears to be an improvement on the group’s Susteno cement products that use fine fractions from concrete and demolition waste. This product is currently sold in Switzerland where it is advertised as saving 10% of CO₂ emissions compared to a standard cement product. Both Holcim and HeidelbergCement already sell concrete products that use the coarse waste from building demolition. Other than this, Holcim says that the range will also include cements that contain calcined clay. In June 2021 subsidiary Lafarge France announced that it would produce a cement product under the ECOPlanet banner using kaolin clay with its proprietary ProximA Tech process at its integrated La Malle cement plant in Bouc-Bel-Air.

We will have to wait and see how far Holcim goes in standardisng the range between different countries. Yet, judging from what the countries that are already selling ECOPlanet are doing, it looks like it will be a variety of blended cements. At present, for example, Holcim Germany offers four products in the ECOPlanet range. These are all slag cements, with three having effective CO₂ reductions of up to 70% and the fourth, ECOPlanet Zero, reaching 100% through a carbon offsetting scheme in conjunction with MoorFutures. Holcim Italy also launched a product in the range called ECOPlanet Prime using calcined clay in June 2021.

Incidentally, LafargeHolcim US announced a research project this week with the US Army about using demolition waste. It’s going to start working with the US Army Corps of Engineers’ Engineer Research and Development Center and Geocycle to look at how construction and demolition materials from military installations can be used for energy recovery and mineral recycling. Group resources at Geocycle’s Holly Hill Research Center in South Carolina, US and Holcim’s Global Innovation Center in Lyon, France will be used in the scheme.

Other low carbon cement products are available of course. Holcim is far from alone in launching low CO₂ cement and concrete products. Yet the use of worldwide brand names is different. Cemex is doing something similar with the global rollout of its Vertua concrete products. It first launched Vertua in France in 2018 before going global in 2020. Holcim started to launch ECOPact Concrete in 2019. Now, Holcim has gone further by doing the same thing with cement. Given how localised cement and concrete products are, it will be instructive to see how global branding for low carbon cementitious products helps these companies. For instance, who is the target audience? It could be eco-minded self-build customers or project specifiers or government departments or industry lobbyists. Or perhaps it is simply another marketing channel to reinforce the sector’s sustainable offerings.

The other point worth considering is when will the multinational cement producers start selling sustainable cements and concretes in less rich parts of the world? While Holcim was playing with blended cements and marketing this week, Dangote Cement said that it was ready to start commissioning its new 6Mt/yr integrated plant at Okpella, Edo State in Nigeria. Another 5Mt/yr plant is also on the way in the country from Madugu Cement. It has just signed a contract for China-based Sinoma International Engineering Company to build it. When Holcim and the other cement companies start selling low carbon cements in places like Nigeria then the rise of these products will be complete.

For more information on low CO₂ cement production read our feature in the February 2021 issue of Global Cement Magazine