Displaying items by tag: Emissions
Cembureau warns European Green Deal to encourage investment, certainty and competitiveness
12 December 2019Belgium: Cembureau, the European Cement Association, has called on the European Union’s (EU) Green Deal to incentivise investment in low-carbon technologies, provide long-term legal certainty and foster the industry’s global competitiveness. It said that the new proposal to tackle climate change showed ‘great promise’ and ‘ambitious vision’ but that this needed to be converted into action to support a successful industrial transformation.
The association is concerned about a new carbon border adjustment mechanism. In its view, “the replacement of the existing carbon leakage measures by an untested mechanism would create considerable uncertainty and risks.” Instead it called on the EU to look at a design that complements the existing carbon leakage measures and is fair for third country importers and EU producers.
Aspects of the European Green Deal that the association praised included the recognition that the cement industry is ‘indispensible’ to the European economy. It also liked the European Commission’s (EC) emphasis on the circular economy that fits with work the sector is doing already from alternative fuels usage to recycling concrete.
"The European Green Deal is our new growth strategy – for a growth that gives back more than it takes away. It shows how to transform our way of living and working, of producing and consuming so that we live healthier and make our businesses innovative. We can all be involved in the transition and we can all benefit from the opportunities,” said EC president Ursula von der Leyen in relation to the new policy proposal.
The EC published its recommendations on how to help energy-intensive industries meet the EU’s 2050 climate target in late November 2019. Its key suggestions were to create markets for climate-neutral and circular products, develop large-scale pilot projects on clean technologies and switch to alternative climate-neutral energy and feedstock sources. It added that the pilot projects should be supported by EU funds and given easier access to private financing. These recommendations will be presented to the EU member states, the EU Competitiveness Council and the European Parliament in early 2020.
Germany: HeidelbergCement’s specific CO2 net emissions per tonne of cementitious material fell by 1.4% year-on-year to 599kg CO2/t in 2018 from 608kg CO2/t in 2017. Despite this its absolute gross CO2 emissions increased by 3% to 76.7Mt from 74.2Mt as clinker, cement, aggregate and concrete sales volumes all grew in 2018. The group has published the data in its Sustainability Report for the 2018 financial year.
“Cutting our CO2 emissions and handling natural resources considerately are priorities for all our business lines,” says Bernd Scheifele, chairman of the managing board of HeidelbergCement. "We focus primarily on the development of sustainable products and the implementation of concrete measures at plant level in order to achieve our sustainability goals.” The company has set itself the target of a 30% reduction in its specific net CO2 emissions per tonne of cement by 2030, compared with 1990. HeidelbergCement says it intends to realise its vision of CO2-neutral concrete by 2050 at the latest.
Other figures of note in the report include an alternative fuels substitution rate of 21.7% in 2018 compared in 20.8% in 2017. NOx, SOx and particulate matter emissions all fell. However, total water withdrawal rose by 8% to 65.4Mm3 from 60.4Mm3 although water consumption fell.
India: Zuari Cement’s integrated cement plant at Sitapuram, Telangana has been issued a show cause notice by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) for exceeding particulate matter emissions. During an inspection it has found to be emitting 40.6mg/Nm3 from the kiln and 78mg/Nm3 from the cement mill, according to the Times of India newspaper. The limit is 30mg/Nm3. CPCB officials also found other violations including an alleged deliberate attempt show reduced levels of sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide. The plant has been asked to calibrate its dust monitors properly and submit a compliance report by late July 2019.
India: Chettinad Cement’s Karikkali plant in Tamil Nadu has been issued a show cause notice by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) for exceeding particulate matter emissions by more than three times the limit. An inspection following Online Continuous Emission Monitoring Systems (OCEMS) data found emissions of 91.2mg/Nm3, according to the New Indian Express. The limit is 30mg/Nm3. The CPCB also found discrepancies with the OCEMS data due to poor instrument calibration.
Ireland: Local environmental activists have accused the Irish Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of ignoring European Union (EU) NOx emission limits by granting an exemption to Irish Cement’s Limerick integrated plant. Limerick Against Pollution group alleges that the plant has been allowed a limit of 800mg/m3 despite a EU directive reducing the limit to 500mg/m3, according to the Limerick Post newspaper.
Austria: Data from the Austrian Cement Industry Association (VÖZ) shows that cement production rose by 7.4% year-on-year to 5.2Mt in 2018. The increase has been attributed to a construction boom. Sales of cement grew by 4.7% to Euro432m. Sales continue to increase at a similar rate in the first quarter of 2019 but this has slowed down in the second quarter.
The association has said that environmental investment more than doubled in 2018 to Euro45m. The local industry’s alternative fuels substitution rate was 82% and CO2 emissions fell by 0.8% to 521kg/t of cement.
South Africa: PPC says it plans to shut the kiln at its Port Elizabeth cement plant ahead of stricter requirements to the country’s emission standards. It is shutting down the kiln to meet new standards for NO2 and dust emissions on 1 April 2020, according to Reuters. Around 30 jobs are expected to be affected by the shutdown.
The cement producer’s revenue rose slightly year-on-year to US$736m in its financial year to 31 March 2019. Its profit nearly quadrupled to US$10.2m. Its cement sales volumes also rose slightly to 5.9Mt. Sales and earnings fell in South Africa due to a poor market but they grew elsewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa, notably in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Japan: Taiheiyo Cement has set an 80% CO2 reduction target from cement production by 2050. It also plans to reduce its emissions from cement products by 20%. It aims to do this via a variety of means including energy-saving measures, promoting co-processing, lowering the clinker factor of its cement and CO2 capture technology. The cement producer started a pilot of a chemical absorption method on kiln exhaust gases at its Fujiwara plant in early 2019.
UltraTech Cement to exceed 25% green energy contribution to total energy consumption by 2021
20 June 2019India: UltraTech Cement aims to increase contribution of so-called ‘green energy’ to 25% of its total power consumption by 2021 from 10% at present. It also intends to raise its contribution of renewable energy to its total power consumption by five times in the next two years to 2021 to over 10%. By building capacity for renewable power the cement producer intends to become one of the largest users of renewable energy in the Indian cement sector.
In addition to renewable energy, the green energy contribution includes energy generated through waste heat recovery systems (WHR). During its 2019 financial year UltraTech commissioned 28MW of WHR systems to take its total generation from WHR to 8% of total power consumption. Further upgrades are expected to be completed in a phased manner by 2021, taking its WHR share to 15% of its total power requirement.
“To bring the cement sector in line with the Paris Agreement on climate change, UltraTech Cement’s annual emissions will need to fall by at least 16% by 2030. There are a number of solutions for reducing emissions associated with cement production as identified by the latest Low Carbon Technology Roadmap published by International Energy Agency (IEA) in partnership with Cement Sustainability Initiative (CSI). These solutions need to be deployed at scale to meet the decarbonisation challenge,” said K K Maheshwari, the managing director of UltraTech Cement.
UltraTech Cement has set a target to reduce its CO2 emissions by 25% from its 2005 – 2006 level by 2021. The company is also working on CO2 reduction strategies including energy efficiency, alternative fuels, WHR, renewable energy and reducing its clinker ratio.
Dust matters in India
12 June 2019There was a glimmer of good news visible through the Delhi smog this week with the launch of a market-based emissions trading scheme (ETS) for particulate matter (PM). A pilot has started at Surat in Gujarat. The scheme will apply to 350 industries in the locality and it will be scrutinised for wider rollout in the country.
China robustly started to tackle its industrial PM emitters a few years ago although the work remains on-going. In its wake India has increasingly made the wrong sort of headlines with horrifically high dust emissions. Delhi, for example, reportedly had PM2.5 emissions of over 440µg/m3 in January 2019. To give this some context, the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) annual upper guideline figure for safe human exposure is 10µg/m3. Research by the Financial Times newspaper suggested that more than 40% of the Indian population is subject to annual PM2.5 emissions of over 50µg/m3.
Air Quality Life Index (AQLI) research reckons that if India were able to meet its national PM2.5 standard of 40µg/m3 then its population would live 1.8 years longer or 4.3 years longer if it met the WHO guideline level. The current situation is an unnecessary tragedy. In strictly structural terms the country’s productivity is being thrown away by damaging the health of its workforce. For comparison amongst other major cement producing countries, AQLI data placed China’s PM2.5 emissions at 39µg/m3, Indonesia at 22µg/m3, Vietnam at 20µg/m3 the US at 9µg/m3. These figures cover all industries in different conditions and climates. If the US can do it, why not the others?
Back on trading schemes, the famous ETS at the moment is the European one for CO2 emissions. Similar schemes are slowly appearing around the world as governments look at what the European Union (EU) did right and wrong. For example, South Africa started up a carbon tax in early June 2019. Yet as the supporting documents by the Gujarat Pollution Control Board (GPCB) point out there have been a variety of ETS systems’ over the years. The US’s Acid Rain Program is generally seen to have achieved significant reductions in SO2 and NOx emissions although the National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP) has continued this work. Chile even ran its own PM ETS in the 1990s although the outcomes have been disputed.
One problem with a CO2 ETS, and anthropomorphic or man-made climate change in general, is that it is intangible. Even if sea levels deluge major coastal cities, rising mean temperatures reduce agricultural yields and human populations contract sharply, people will still be arguing over the research and the causes. The beauty of a PM ETS is that if it works you can literally see and feel the results. A famous example here is the UK’s Clean Air Act in the 1950s that banished the fog/smog that London used to be famous for.
The Gujarat PM ETS is a pilot, the results of which will be considered by researchers from a number of US-based universities and the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab. Explicitly, the study plans to use a randomised control trial to compares its results against the command and control style approach used in the rest of the country. On the cement-side various Indian news stories have emerged as state pollution boards have increasingly started fining producers for emission limit breaches. Clearly the government is taking dust emissions seriously. Reduction is long overdue.