The European Union (EU) Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) carbon price took a tumble this week following comments suggesting a rethink by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. Minds have been focused by the start of the Cross Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) in January 2026, high energy prices and poor growth. The challenge is now on in the lead up to the next proposals to update the EU ETS, expected by July 2026.

As the abrupt change in the carbon price shows, words have power. Especially from prominent politicians. So, when former President Barack Obama told a podcast host this week that aliens were real, the world took notice. Obama subsequently clarified, with some exasperation, that he had responded to a light-hearted question in kind with his belief. Similarly, when Merz said last week that the EU’s carbon market should be revised or delayed, the markets took note. The ETS carbon price fell by 12% from €79/t on 11 February 2026 to €69/t on 16 February 2026. The share prices of large Europe-based cement producers such as Holcim and Heidelberg Materials also fell.

Merz’s speech to the European Industry Summit in Antwerp on 11 February 2026 called for the EU to become competitive again. He noted that the economy had grown by 8% in China in recent years, by 2% in the US and only 1% in the EU. His remedy is to reduce bureaucracy, promote a common European legal framework to make trans-national business easier, improve the common energy market to reduce energy prices, cut AI regulations in and make ‘better’ merger rules. However, all of these well-signposted measures paled in comparison to comments Merz made on a panel at the event about the possibility of changing the ETS. His words were also similar to those of Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who told reporters last week that the EU needed to review the ETS.

Meanwhile, across the channel in the UK, the government launched its second consultation on its CBAM. The British version is set to start in 2027 and exactly the same kind of arguments and counter-arguments are popping up as in the run up to the EU CBAM. The UK’s Mineral Products Association (MPA) has been lobbying to make sure that the scheme doesn’t hurt the local cement and concrete sectors. Cue familiar issues such as time to test the new system, clarity on the default values importers will pay when emissions can’t be verified, protection for local manufacturers… and so on.

Carbon taxes like the EU ETS are political instruments. They require certainty that they will persist for years or decades before companies will make investments in response to them. So, if the heads of some of the largest economies within the EU start to publicly question the viability of the ETS, why should anyone take it seriously, much less open up the cheque book to build fancy untested technologies such as carbon capture plants!? Naturally, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen defended the scheme at the Antwerp event. She argued that decarbonisation has been possible in tandem with economic growth over the longer term. It is likely to have been a tough crowd, given that she was making this point at a conference about industrial competitiveness in Europe.

The most likely amendment to the ETS being touted in the press may be an extension of the free allocation system beyond the mid-2030s. Or, in other words, a brake could be imposed on how fast the cost of the carbon tax mounts up for protected industries such as cement. This would also effectively restrict more expensive forms of sustainability such as carbon capture to projects funded by governments, unless there was a step-change in the technology, CO₂ transport infrastructure and so on. All the talk by industry in the run-up to the CBAM was about stopping an external leak of the system and exposing local industry to ‘unfair’ imports. At the moment it looks like the actual leak will come from within. At which point, accusations about carbon taxes merely being a form of economic protectionism seem more credible.

2026 has begun as the year of the ‘underdeveloped’ cement market, with new cement plant projects underway from Bangladesh to Zimbabwe. Only one industry announced two new cement plant projects: Afghanistan – which only had three plants to begin with!

The plants, when operational, will be the 1.1Mt/yr Yatīm Taq plant in Jowzjan Province and 1Mt/yr Aliabad plant in Kunduz Province. Both provinces lie in Afghanistan’s northern borders, opposite Turkmenistan and Tajikistan respectively, with the new plants situated in their mountainous interiors, 320km apart from one another.

The Aliabad and Yatīm Taq plants diverge in the matter of funding: Aliabad is a joint Afghan-Tajik-Chinese venture, including two separate Chinese parties. Meanwhile, Yatīm Taq is a foreign enterprise. Türkiye’s local consul general announced the investment on 14 January 2026. We can fill in the details with the help of an earlier announcement from October 2024: Türkiye-based 77 Inşaat concluded a deal to build a US$163m cement plant at the same location. This would appear to be a match and supplies us a best estimate of a price tag for the Yatīm Taq plant – though plans do change.

Table 1 (below) lists all on-going cement plant builds in Afghanistan as reported in the Global Cement News to date, with the latest announced projects at the top.

Table 1: Current cement plant projects in Afghanistan.

Few plants have publicly stated commissioning dates: Ghori (#3) was on schedule for April 2027, per plant head Shafiullah Wahidi, speaking on 30 October 2025; Shurandam (#8) had been due in October 2025. Elsewhere, estimates include ‘in the near future’ (Yatīm Taq cement plant, in October 2024). Considering how unlike anything previously achieved in the Afghan cement sector these undertakings are, a little vagueness is understandable.

Besides the Jabal Saraj plant in Parwan Province (commissioned: 1944) and Ghori I plant in Baghlan Province (1962), Afghanistan’s youngest plant is the Soviet-era Ghori II. It began construction using a US$42m Czechoslovakian loan in 1986, and reportedly never reached its intended capacity before further works stalled indefinitely in 1989.¹ Three decades of war brought Soviet and subsequent US-led coalition withdrawals and precipitated a complete takeover by the Taliban in 2021. The latest tranche of new-builds belong to a different generation both technologically and in the life of Afghanistan.

In addition to the age difference, and connected to it, is the matter of size. Ghori II, Ghori I and Jabal Saraj, in descending capacity order, command 400,000t/yr, 200,000t/yr and 30,000t/yr. The above projects in Table 1, if fully realised, will raise the national installed capacity by a multiple of 14.

The new, billion-dollar Afghan cement industry is partly being grafted onto the old: when commissioned in 2027, the Ghori project (#3 in Table 1) will be the 1.8Mt/yr Ghori III plant, part of an expanded 2.4Mt/yr complex. In October 2025, the Ghori I and Ghori II plants more than doubled combined production to 700t/day, corresponding to a capacity utilisation of 43% across the existing complex.

Meanwhile, the Jabal Saraj project (#4) brings together local investors Alfala ul Alami and Awfi Bahram and Qatar-based Al-Maham International Group for a 1.1Mt/yr expansion of the country’s smallest plant, up to 1.13Mt/yr. After this, the joint venture plans to further triple capacity, up by another 2.2Mt/yr, to 3.33Mt/yr, turning the plant into Afghanistan’s largest. The last update on the project emerged back in January 2025: the first phase of exploration work was underway.

To call Afghanistan an underdeveloped cement market is not to dismiss its part in the global cement industry. The country exports coking coal, including to neighbouring Pakistan. Following the closure of the Afghan-Pakistan border amid deteriorating relations in October 2025, northern Pakistani cement producers began to rely on imports from Indonesia or Africa for their coal supply. The loss of the Pakistan coal market ‘heavily’ impacted Afghan economic growth.²

Afghanistan’s population was 42.6m in 2024, up by 3% year-on-year and by 30% decade-on-decade.³ The growing market is a target for Iranian, Tajik and Uzbek producers – the last of which shipped 273,000t of cement there in the first nine months of 2025. Afghanistan was formerly the destination for 7% of Pakistan’s cement exports, contributing 10% of all sales for Cherat Cement and 6% for Fauji Cement in 2025.

All that was needed for the industrial transformation of domestic cement production was investment. In 2026, on the 40th anniversary of the Ghori II plant’s Prague-backed groundbreaking, funding no longer flows from Europe – nor under the auspices of a foreign invasion. Instead, it lies along a new, financial axis between China and West Asia. Following the announcement of the Aliabad project on Monday 2 February 2026, operators from five foreign countries will compete in the Afghan cement sector as its new plants come online, beginning any time now.

There are difficulties: Afghanistan is landlocked. Its regime (which, uniquely in the world, has banned education for girls beyond the age of 12) gives rise to issues for producers’ global market access. A complete reliance on coal will also hamper efforts to realise international standards. There are also creative solutions, however. One country recognises the Taliban as Afghanistan’s legitimate government, and also happens to be looking for a market for its oil, after losing India on 2 February 2025.⁴ That country is Russia.

Afghanistan’s mid-2020s cement plant-building drive has spawned previously unheard-of partnerships across cultural chasms, all under conditions of informal international relations. It presents a vision of this erstwhile peripheral nation of South, West and Central Asia as a connector of them all in an emergent super-region. Naïve expectations have gone to die in Afghanistan in the past; on the other hand, this collaboration with nations as diverse as China and Türkiye may have a liberalising effect on the political culture of Afghanistan and transform its cement sector, if not in this generation, then in time.

References

1 Afghan Biographies, ‘Ghori Cement Factory,’ October 2023, https://afghan-bios.info/index.php?option=com_afghanbios&id=2301&task=view&total=3600&start=1089&Itemid=2#

2 TRT World, ‘Why is Taliban relying on cement production to achieve Afghan self-reliance,’ 26 March 2024, https://www.trtworld.com/article/17519719

3 World Bank Data, ‘Population, total - Afghanistan,’ August 2025, ‘https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.TOTL?end=2024&locations=AF&start=1960

4 Reuters, ‘US to cut tariffs on India to 18%, India agrees to end Russian oil purchases,’ 2 February 2026, www.reuters.com/world/india/trump-says-agreed-trade-deal-with-india-2026-02-02/

The long-running debate over the price of cement in Nigeria flared up again once more this week. Think tank Agora Policy published a report on the local cement sector and it blamed the structure of the industry for the situation. What’s more it also presented a compelling range of data backing up its argument. We’ll take a closer look.

Agora Policy published its report entitled ‘Market Power and Failure of Competition Policy in Nigeria’s Cement Industry,’ in early February 2026. It is well worth a read. It questions why the price of cement was so high in a country that had declared itself ‘self-sufficient’ in cement in 2012 and where production capacity was higher than demand. Its data then goes on to show that cement producers in Nigeria appeared to have higher profit margins than producers in Asia, Europe and elsewhere in Africa. It stated that cement producers in Nigeria reported average profit margins of approximately 49% in September 2025 and 34% in 2024. This compared to 20 - 36% in North America, 15 - 25% in Asia, 20 – 30% in Europe and 18 – 30% elsewhere in Africa. It then noted that cement prices in Nigeria had been higher than the average for Sub-Saharan Africa for nine of the 11 years from 2015 to 2025. It acknowledged that input costs such as taxes, negative currency exchange rates, energy prices and transport fees had played a role in pushing up prices. However, it directly blamed the structure of the market citing price leadership, regional dominance and control of critical inputs.

Distinctly from previous rows about prices in Nigeria, the think tank does not call for imports to be allowed in or increased. Instead, it recommends the following measures: access to limestone and clinker to be liberalised; logistics to be improved; regional market share to be scrutinised; operational data to be submitted to competition authorities; and general competition regulations to be tightened.

Notably, one of the things Agora Policy’s report mentions is how it views the use of excess production capacity by the local cement companies to control the market. Its interpretation is that, “incumbents with large unused capacity can credibly threaten to temporarily flood the market and cut prices if a new competitor attempts to enter.” So, plans by producers, such as BUA Cement announcement in January 2026 to build a new 3Mt/yr cement production line in Sokoto State, can be viewed as both addressing a market need and a strategic one. More capacity can potentially relieve price pressure or even reduce it but it can also be used to deter competitors from building plants. Another example of producers building new capacity in a market where capacity is greater than demand occurred in the last week. Lafarge Africa said it plans to expand its Ashakacem Plant in Gombe State and Sagamu Plant in Ogun State.

None of this is to say that the main cement companies in Nigeria appear to have broken any competition laws. They may simply be taking advantage of the existing market structure as most companies would in this situation. The debate on the price of cement in Nigeria has been a recurring one since 2020, with few answers so far. The acquisition of Lafarge Africa by China-based Hauxin Cement in mid-2025 did mark a change to the market composition. Yet, whether Huaxin Cement chooses to follow the logic of the local market situation or do something different remains to be seen. The real question at this point is whether the recommendations that Agora Policy has made are the right ones and if a government would actually want to implement them and be able to. A criticism of Agora Policy’s recommendations might point out that it is simply identifying general features of the cement business. Clinker production requires a high level of capital investment, mineral resources need to be secured, logistics are key for a heavy commodity and so on.

Finally, Arvind Pathak, the Group Managing Director of Dangote Cement reminded investors this week that his company is planning to make all of Africa self-sufficient in cement production. It’s both a noble goal and a commercial prize for a region with Africa’s demographic potential. Yet, if the experience in Nigeria is anything to go by, simply becoming self-sufficient in cement without governments making other changes may not be enough to build the Africa of tomorrow.

The Cement Manufacturers Association of the Philippines (CEMAP) revealed this week that it has nearly completed its decarbonisation roadmap. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has been proactive as a region in drawing up plans to decarbonise its cement sector. Notably, the Thai industry released its roadmap in 2024 and the ASEAN Federation of Cement Manufacturers (AFCM) released its 2035 AFCM Decarbonisation Roadmap in December 2025.

In the Philippines the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), in partnership with the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), announced the launch of the development process for the Philippines Cement Decarbonisation Roadmap in October 2025. At the time, it said that the local sector produced over 27Mt of cement in 2024 from a production capacity of 53Mt/yr. That last figure is likely to include cement grinding plants since the Global Cement Directory 2025 placed local integrated capacity at 32Mt/yr. Little information on what this roadmap might contain has emerged so far, but CEMAP president Reinier Dizon told local press this week that increasing the use of alternative fuels was going to be the main action plan.

Clear figures for the alternative fuels thermal substitution rates (TSR) in the cement industry in the Philippines are hard to find publicly. However, Cemex Philippines reported a 28% TSR in 2022. There have been plenty of news stories demonstrating activity though. For example, Holcim Philippines signed a deal with Prime Infrastructure Capital in November 2025 for the supply of refuse-derived fuel (RDF) to its cement plants in Bulacan and La Union. Holcim Philippines could be seen preparing for this back in mid-2024 when it said it was investing US$6.5m to upgrade the La Union plant and increase the use of alternative fuels and raw materials to 40%. Other companies have also been busy, including the recycling arm of Republic Cement, Ecoloop, which stated that it had used 110,000t of plastic sachets in 2023 as fuel in its kilns. Similarly, Cemex Philippines and its Regenera waste management subsidiary struck a deal with snack food and beverage brand Oishi in 2024 to take its plastic waste. Cemex Philippines was subsequently divested and rebranded as Concreat Holdings Philippines later that same year.

When the AFCM launched its 2035 AFCM Decarbonisation Roadmap, it described it as the world’s first regional decarbonisation strategy for the cement sector. The public version doesn’t contain a TSR target but it does say that alternative fuels are expected to cut CO₂ emissions by 15.4Mt by 2035. The focus is on biomass, refuse-derived fuel and industrial waste.

One of the leaders in the region has been the Thai Cement Manufacturers Association (TCMA). It published the Thailand 2050 Net Zero Cement & Concrete Roadmap in late 2024. It currently has an alternative fuels TSR target of 54% by 2050. The TCMA said at the 26th Technical Symposium & Exhibition of the ASEAN Federation of Cement Manufacturers (AFCM), which took place in Kuala Lumpur in late 2024, that the country was on course for a TSR of 34% in 2024. Both Siam Cement Group (SCG) and Siam City Cement (INSEE) reported TSRs of just below 29% in 2024. Asia Cement’s Pukrang plant had a TSR of 27% in 2025, for example, and is now aiming at above 60% by 2030. For more on this read the report in the February 2026 issue of Global Cement Magazine.

Meanwhile, also this week, the NITI Aayog public policy think tank of the Government of India, published its roadmap for the local cement sector too. This is on a similar scale to the ASEAN Roadmap as a whole given the large size of the cement industry in India. It is the second largest in the world. The key takeaway on alternative fuels is a target of 20% RDF usage by 2030. The other major point is that this roadmap aims at net zero by 2070.

The summary for most of these roadmaps for the cement industry is to take the tested, ‘easier’ and cheaper measures first. So, increase the use of alternative fuels, reduce the clinker factor through the use of supplementary cementitious materials and then finish the job with carbon capture. The devil is in the detail though with wide regional differences on how to approach the first two, even between cement plants in the same country. The final one, carbon capture, is barely tested commercially. In 2024 Cement Europe (formerly Cembureau) reported that the European Union had a mean TSR of 58%. Cement plants in both the ASEAN and India have great potential to increase their TSRs and this is being shown in the roadmaps.

The 1st CemFuels Asia Conference takes place in Bangkok on 2 - 3 February 2026