Displaying items by tag: GCCA
World Economic Forum and GCCA report identifies the countries that are prioritising green public procurement
24 June 2022UK: 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.”
GCCA launches Innovandi Open Challenge
10 May 2022World: 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.”