I have sung in choirs all my life, including for 20 years in Dorking Choral Society, and now in my village choir, Ashtead Choral Society. I love singing, for the mental workout it gives you, for the camaraderie and for the lovely sounds that we can make (after plenty of rehearsals). I am a tenor (the higher of the two male voices), and we are quite rare, so we are heartily welcomed into any choir. Over the years, I have sung a huge variety of pieces, from Jacobean bawdy songs, to Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, and from the most delicate of motets to the huge waves of sound produced by massed choirs and orchestra in some of the grandest pieces of music ever written. The pieces are always chosen by the musical directors and conductors of the choirs I have sung in, and they will of course choose the pieces that will get an audience to turn up and pay for a ticket, or as we say, ‘get bums on seats.’
Running through my life in choirs though is the repeated singing of holy masses and requiems. They are chosen for their high artistry, since any composer worth his pay over the last 400 years has typically - among their output of symphonies and oratorios - produced at least one setting of the mass and a requiem - often for the benefit of the soul of a wealthy benefactor or patron. They act in some ways as a ‘show reel’ of the composer’s talents, and so composers put in their best work. Think of the Mozart Requiem, Fauré Requiem, Mass in Blue, Nelson Mass by Haydn or Rutter Requiem - all of them absolute ‘bangers’ - and crucially, familiar to potential audiences.
However, what I’m rehearsing with the choir at the moment is the Brahms Requiem, sung in German, which is rather different from all the others. Instead of appealing to God for mercy for the soul of the deceased, and for their eternal rest, the Brahms Requiem is concerned with the grief and alleviation of the suffering of the mourners - those still in the world, and dealing with day-to-day reality. For this reason, the Brahms Requiem is known as the Humanist Requiem and it contains messages of joy and consolation.
As so often in this column, by now you will be asking yourself, ‘What has this got to do with cement?’ Well, I’m often struck by the dichotomy of approaches to the world between those who view the evidence and act on how the world is in reality, and those who act on the way that they would like the world to be, or just wish that the world was different from the way that it is. For instance, the overwhelming evidence is that the world is warming - surely there can be no doubt about this? Furthermore, the global consensus among scientists (not unanimous, but vastly supported) is that human-generated greenhouse gases are driving this warming trend. Chief among the warming gases are carbon dioxide and methane. Happily, the cement industry does not create methane (agriculture and fossil fuels, I’m looking at you). However, our current modus operandi is to create vast amounts of CO2 while making cement. I sometimes think of each clinker-producing plant as a drill-hole into the deep earth, with carbon dioxide spewing from the top of the corresponding chimney. However, it does not have to be like this: there are plenty of ways - often covered in the pages of Global Cement Magazine, and discussed in detail since 2011 at our Global FutureCem Conference on decarbonation - for the cement industry to reduce or even to eliminate its carbon-producing habit. We need to deal with this reality, for the good of ourselves and our descendants, rather than just ignoring the evidence or wishing that it was not so.
I view ‘decarbonisation’ as the process of reducing the production of CO2 from cement - but in nearly every case, we will still be left with carbon dioxide which needs to be dispose-of rather than emitted, at which point we must consider capture and sequestration (CCS). I’ve recently compiled a list of carbon capture projects1 which brings into stark focus those cement companies that are taking real-world steps to deal with today’s reality (and, by their absence, those that are not). Top honours go to Heidelberg Materials, to Holcim and to Schwenk Zement, for putting spades in the ground and for spending real money to capture industrial quantities of CO2. Other companies are following, but they are behind the leaders. We’ll be talking a lot more about CCUS for the cement industry at the Global CemCCUS Conference in Oslo in May.
I have learned over the years that whenever I am feeling aimless, I just need to follow one adage that I tell myself, out loud and with some force: “Take action!” The Brahms Requiem, with its humanist message, is for the living, telling them that there is hope in this world. In turn, when our cement industry looks at the evidence and takes action, through decarbonisation (see the Loesche article in the May 2024 issue of Global Cement Magazine) and eventually through CCS, then we are dealing with reality, without recourse to magical thinking.
