Displaying items by tag: net zero

Germany: HeidelbergCement has signed the Science-Based Targets Initiative’s (SBTi) Business Ambition for 1.5°C commitment and joined the United Nations (UN) Framework Convention on Climate Change Race to Zero campaign. The former entails a commitment to limiting global warming to 1.5°C and achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050. Race to Zero membership entails a positive commitment to beginning the transition to a decarbonised economy before the UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties in November 2021.

Chair Dominik von Achten said “As one of the world's leading building materials producers, we are continuously increasing our efforts in the global fight against climate change. We are working on all levels to reach climate neutrality – within our operations as well as through associations and initiatives such as the Race To Zero campaign. Every effort brings us closer to our goal.”

Germany: A consortium of Mexico-based Cemex subsidiary Cemex Deutschland, Uckerwerk Energietechnik subsidiary Enertrag and hydrogen specialist Sunfire has announced a cement industry decarbonisation project called Concrete Chemicals. The project will see sequestered CO₂ combined with hydrogen to produce hydrocarbons for use as cement fuel. The consortium has submitted a funding application to the German Ministry for Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety for a trial at Cemex’s Rüdersdorf, Brandenburg, cement plant. This would help in the realisation of the plant’s 2030 carbon neutrality target. Alongside a 5000t/yr demonstration plant, the site will have a green hydrogen plant, supplied by Sunfire. When commissioned in 2025, the plant will produce synthetic fuels and other hydrocarbon fractions. The consortium is also investigating a methanol synthesis route using synthetic gas.

Europe, Middle East and Africa regional president Sergio Menendez said “We support the urgency of action to address the climate challenge and have committed to a 55% reduction in CO2 from our 1990 baseline in our European operations by 2030. Together with our industry partners, we can collectively transform ourselves into a CO₂-neutral world. Concrete Chemicals is a promising project.”

South Korea: Korea Cement Association (KCA) members have agreed to reduce their net CO₂ emissions to zero by 2050. To help them achieve this target, the state-owned Korea Development Bank has pledged US876m in investments in emissions reduction and green production upgrades by 2025, according to the Maeil Business Newspaper. The KCA says that 90% of local cement producers have increased their environmental, social and corporate governance investment and reduced their use of coal.

There was good news from the corporate finance sector for cement producers this week in the form of an approving statement by Fitch Ratings. It declared that it expected the sector to be able to pass on the costs of decarbonisation to customers due to a lack of alternatives. It recognised the challenges posed by regulators, investors and societal pressure but, even so, it suggested that cement was still an industry worth backing. Or at least for now. Added to this, it forecast that demand for building materials would grow to support the transition to a low carbon economy and to combat the damage caused by climate change. It did admit that the capital or operating costs required to decarbonise are seen as being potentially large, especially with uncertainty over how much governments will pay or incentivise. Yet the timescales involved are beyond the ratings agency’s ‘horizon’ hence no really disruptive shifts in producer economics are expected anytime soon.

This was obviously a win for the cement industry and its cheerleading associations led by the Global Cement and Concrete Association (GCCA), the World Cement Association and the regional associations. After all, the increasingly convergent message to the wider world has been along the lines of ‘concrete is part of the solution and you need our products because there’s nothing else.’ Good timing then for the GCCA to launch its collaboration with the World Economic Forum, the ‘Concrete Action for Climate’ (CAC) initiative. The collaborative platform is planned to help drive the industry’s journey to carbon neutral concrete by 2050 as part of the wider Mission Possible Partnership, a wider coalition of public and private organisations working on setting the heavy industry and transport sectors towards net-zero. Expect lots more of these kinds of announcements on the road to the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) taking place in Scotland in late October 2021.

Fitch Ratings did point out that societal awareness was likely to accelerate decarbonisation. The sharp end of this trend was experienced by the building materials industry this week when environmental activist group Extinction Rebellion forced operations to stop temporarily at LafargeHolcim’s Port de Javel ready-mixed concrete plant in Paris on 30 June 2021. This followed a similar incident by the same group at a LafargeHolcim subsidiary ready-mix plant in London in mid-2019. Given the share of global CO₂ emissions from the cement-concrete production chain, it is perhaps surprising that climate activists haven’t targeted clinker-producing cement plants directly in the same way that they have gone after coal-fired power stations. Clinker kilns are, after all, the source of the majority of the sector’s emissions. However, blockading a concrete plant in the city may conjure up a more potent media image than doing the same to a factory out in the country.

Instead the battles with cement plants and their quarries tend to be of a ‘not in my back yard’ (Nimby) nature. Or rather ‘not in my monastery (Nimmon?) this week, with the news that a subsidiary of YTL Cement in Malaysia is attempting to evict a group of Buddhist monks and their underground place of worship from a quarry on Mount Kanthan in Perak. In the latest twist of the long running saga, the monks have hit back with an attempt to get their portion of the site recognised as a place of worship and a heritage site. Thankfully a more positive example of how quarries can fit in with the wider community could be found this week in the guise of an archaeological dig at CRH subsidiary Tarmac’s Knobb’s Farm quarry in Cambridgeshire, UK. The discovery of a Roman Britain-era cemetery with a high proportion of decapitated bodies may have been gruesome but the relations between the operator and the archaeologists were much more harmonious. Another recent example was the discovery of what may be a new precursor species of humans, unearthed at a quarry run by Nesher-Israel Cement Enterprises site at Ramla in late June 2021.

The paradox building materials producers pose to environmental activists could be summed up by the record heat wave that hit the north-western region of North America recently. CO₂ emissions, in minor part produced by the cement and concrete industries, are the most likely reason for an increased frequency of extreme weather events such as this. Yet, infrastructure such as pavements and roads were widely reported as having buckled in the heat, principally because they weren’t built for such high temperatures. They will have to be rebuilt to withstand similar temperatures in the future. Building materials can thus be seen as both part of the problem and part of the solution. Yet with net zero targets nearly 30 years away it seems likely that continued extreme weather events and their potentially lethal consequences will speed up the public demand for decarbonisation. It is worth noting here that one of Extinction Rebellion’s demands in the UK is that the country should become net zero by 2025.

Fitch Ratings has cast its vote for now and Extinction Rebellion and its fellows are set to continue to wage their political campaigns. In the meantime it is debatable how much spiritual solace will be found by the monks of Mount Kanthan during blasting hours at the neighbouring quarry.

US: The California Senate has voted in favour of a proposed bill which will require the State Air Resources Board to develop a plan for the state’s cement producers to achieve net zero emissions of greenhouse gases by the end of 2045. A 40% reduction compared to 2019 levels would also be mandated by the end of 2035. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NDRC), an environmental advocacy group that is sponsoring the bill, has called for measures such as requiring public construction projects to use reduced-CO₂ cement and establishing purely performance-based specifications for legally defining cement to be adopted by the eventual strategy if the bill passes into state law. The proposed bill will next move to the California State Assembly as part of the local legislative process.

UK: Germany-based HeidelbergCement’s subsidiary Hanson Cement will be the subject of a study in the use of biomass and hydrogen fuels coordinated by the Mineral Products Association (MPA). The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy is funding the Euro3.81m study, the results of which it says will be shared across the cement industry. HeidelbergCement CEO Dominik von Achten said, "In addition to our activities in the field of carbon capture, use and storage (CCUS), this project is an important step towards realising our vision of carbon-neutral concrete by 2050.”