Displaying items by tag: CO2

Canada: A new report by the Winnipeg-based International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) on the implications of climate change on Canada's infrastructure has been published with the support of the Cement Association of Canada.

'Climate Change Adaptation and Canadian Infrastructure' summarises current literature dealing with the challenge of adapting to climate change in Canada. Intended to serve as stimulus for further discussion around planned adaptation to climate change in Canada, the report explored climate impacts and risks to key infrastructure by region and by type. The report also introduced a number of key policy, regulatory, and financial tools for consideration.

"The cement and concrete industry is committed to being a proactive partner in addressing the challenges of mitigating and adapting to climate change," said Michael McSweeney, President and CEO of the Cement Association of Canada. "We are in an age of massive re-investment in our basic infrastructure in Canada, and this presents an enormous opportunity to both mitigate climate change through reduced CO₂ emissions as well as prepare ourselves for the changes in our climate that are already underway."

France: Lafarge has stockpiled carbon permits in the European Union for the first nine months of 2013 due to weak prices. The multinational cement producer confirmed the situation to Reuters following the release of its third quarter results on 6 November 2013.

"Given the current price for CO₂ rights there is not a strong rationale for sale compared to holding them for the future," said a Lafarge spokeswoman. Lafarge made Euro56m from selling carbon permits in the first nine months of 2012. Holcim reported in its third quarter results for 2013 that its revenue from the sale of CO₂ emission certificates in the first nine months of 2013 fell by 17% year-on-year to Euro8.10m from Euro9.7m.

The EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) has seen the price of carbon permits fall by over 80% to Euro4/t in August 2013 from Euro30/t in 2008. The scheme has been undermined by an oversupply of permits.

Canada: Mantra Venture Group has completed the first phase of engineering for its 'Electro-Reduction of Carbon Dioxide' (ERC) pilot plant. BC Research (BCRI), the technology commercialisation arm of NORAM Engineering and Constructors, has delivered a comprehensive first phase report that details the estimated cost of the plant, which will capture waste carbon dioxide at the Lafarge cement plant in Richmond, British Colombia. The second phase of engineering, which will provide a 'ready-to-build' plant design, is set to begin soon.

So far this work has resulted in several process improvements, including the introduction of a product treatment stage that will deliver a highly concentrated liquid product. As this will be capable of reaching the levels at which the products are typically used in industry, Mantra expects to be able to sell product directly out of the pilot plant. Improved process control, instrumentation, and flow scheme will deliver a more robust demonstration and greatly facilitate the commercial scale-up of the process.

"This will be the very first plant to electrochemically reduce carbon dioxide in an industrial setting. I think people will be very excited when they see a valuable, salable liquid product coming out of the Lafarge flue gas stack," said Mantra's Chief Technology Officer Patrick Dodd.

Ireland: Ecocem has accused the Irish cement industry of failing to align its CO₂ emissions with the European Union carbon 2050 roadmap. The producer of GGBS (Ground Granulated Blastfurnace Slag) cement made the comments in a document detailing its response to the Irish government's Climate Action and Low-Carbon Development Bill 2013. The EU carbon roadmap suggests cutting emissions in Europe by 80% below 1990 levels by 2050.

In its document Ecocem also attacked the European Union's Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), saying that it provided strong incentives against promoting decarbonisation of the cement sector. It added that a transition to a low-carbon cement and concrete industry could create up to 1200 new jobs within five years.

Ecocem says its product has a carbon footprint of 19kg of CO₂ per tonne of cement, compared with about 750 kg of CO₂ per tonne it says is produced by the traditional Irish cement sector.

Cement production took an unnecessarily harsh rap from the latest assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The cause? Misleading wording.

In its summary for policymakers from Working Group I contribution to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (WGI AR5), every time CO₂ emissions were mentioned, cement was also mentioned. Typically this was along the lines of: "annual CO₂ emissions from fossil fuel combustion and cement production". Energy supply or transport industries were not mentioned. Only cement was. Subsequently in some general press reports covering the IPCC report, cement was duly parroted as the major industrial source of CO₂ emissions.

Digging into the data revealed that this particular wording derived from one of the data sources that the IPCC used that examined global CO₂ emissions from fossil-fuel burning, cement manufacture and gas flaring from 1751 - 2008 from the US Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center. Here cement production was grouped along with different type of fossil fuels, such as gas, liquids and solids, and gas flaring. Deeper into the IPCC draft report it was revealed (using this research) that total cumulative emissions between 1750 and 2011 amounted to 365 ± 30 PgC (1 PgC = 10¹⁵ grams of carbon), of which only 8 PgC (2%) came from the production of cement.

Undoubtedly the cement industry's carbon emissions are huge but ambiguous wording in a release targeted for policymakers is not helpful.

Thankfully at about the same time as the IPCC made headlines last week European Cement Association, Cembureau, followed the UK's Mineral Products Association (MPA) in releasing its own lobbying document for the industry. This consisted of five parallel routes to lowering emissions related to cement production. Unfortunately Cembureau's press release didn't receive the global media coverage that the IPCC did.

The bottom line is this: cement is essential for modern industrial societies.

With or without climate change caused by human behaviour, we will all need somewhere to live and work. For the moment such structures will be built from cement and concrete. Organisations like Cembureau offer a way forward. Global policymakers should pay attention.

Belgium: CEMBUREAU, the European Cement Association, has published a roadmap, the role of cement in the 2050 low carbon economy, detailing how the cement industry could achieve lower carbon emissions.

The project presents five parallel routes that can each contribute to lowering emissions related to cement production, as well as concrete production. These include methods such as resource efficiency, energy efficiency and carbon sequestration and reuse. These methods have been quantified in the roadmap because they are under the cement sector's control. The other two routes, product efficiency and downstream, look at how cement and concrete can contribute to a low carbon society.

"The cement roadmap is a view into the future. It shows us what is possible and where we find limitations. It is a good basis for future work, a good starting point. We need cooperation, not confrontation, but we also need to push each other to find new ideas, new pathways, towards a more sustainable future," said MEP Karl-Heinz Florenz at the launch event on 25 September 2013.

New Cement Sustainability Initiative (CSI) data for 2011 shows that the global cement industry has reduced its specific net CO₂ emissions per tonne of cementitious product by 17% since 1990. This represents a serious amount of carbon prevented from entering the atmosphere. Using United States Geological Survey (USGS) world production data, if cement producers in 2011 were still emitting C0₂ at 1990 levels 456Bt of additional CO₂ would have been released between 1990 and 2011.

Unfortunately there are a couple of problems.

Firstly, submitting data for the project is voluntary. As the CSI points out in its press release the data set comprises 55% of cement production outside of China. A rough calculation based on global cement production capacity suggests that this could only account for about one third of cement made. So how much carbon does the other two-thirds of cement made emit?

Secondly, although CO₂ emissions per tonne of cement have gone down by a sixth since 1990, global cement production more than tripled (!) in the same time period. USGS data placed world production at 1.40Bt in 1990. It estimated 3.59Bt in 2011. In terms of net CO₂ released into the atmosphere, in 1990 this was 1058Bt. In 2011 it was 2260Bt.

The big cement producers compare as follows to the CSI data, which reports emissions of 629kg/t. Lafarge reported 592kg/t cementitious in 2011 and 585kg/t in 2012. Holcim reported 584kg/t in 2011 and 579kg/t in 2012. HeidelbergCement reported 621kg/t in 2011. Cemex reported 612kg/t in 2011 and 2012. No data on specific net CO₂ emissions were available for the major Chinese cement producers.

The CSI data shows that the cement industry has made an effort to reduce CO₂ emissions since 1990. Yet this has been counteracted by a rise in cement production. To compensate for the rise in production between 1990 and 2011 the specific net CO₂ emissions per tonne of cementitious product would have had to have fallen to below 300kg/t, a drop of 60%.

Environmentally sensitive readers shouldn't despair yet though as the CSI has demonstrated that emissions and production are gradually separating in the cement industry. From 2010 to 2011 specific net CO₂ emissions per tonne of cementitious product fell from 638kg/t to 629kg/t. If this trend continues - and if it is representative for the cement producers the CSI doesn't cover – then the industry may be getting a handle on its emissions. We may be about to hit peak emissions for the cement industry sooner rather than later.

Switzerland: Global cement producers have reduced CO₂ emissions by 17% per tonne of cementitious product since 1990. Participating cement producers reduced their specific net CO₂ emissions per tonne of cementitious product to 629kg/t in 2011 from 756kg/t in 2011. The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD)'s Cement Sustainability Initiative (CSI) has published the data in its 'Getting the Numbers Right' (GNR) database update for 2011.

"GNR has become established as a valuable source of independently-verified emissions data, which is now used globally by the cement industry to improve energy efficiency and further reduce emissions," said Philippe Fonta, WBCSD managing director. The WBCSD added that the GNR figures provide evidence of the gradual decoupling of emissions and cement output, which demonstrates the significant progress made by the cement industry.

According to the data, the four main drivers for the reduction in emissions have been investment in more efficient kiln technology, increasing use of alternative fuels such as biomass, reduction in clinker content and an 8% decrease in electricity use per tonne of cement since 1990.

The 2011 GNR data comprised 55% of cement production outside of China, with 96% coverage in Europe spanning 967 individual facilities. The 2011 report included data from Thailand, Morocco, Philippines and Egypt for the first time.

US: Texas-based cement producer Capitol Aggregates Cement is preparing to retrofit a carbon capture plant to its cement plant. The project, in conjunction with Skyonic Corporation, is expected to profitably removal more than 300,000t of CO₂ from the plant's emissions.

"The Capitol SkyMine plant will mark the first time that carbon-negative chemistry has reached the commercial stage," said Joe Jones, founder and CEO of Skyonic. Skyonic Corporation has secured US$128m funding to support the project from new investors Cenovus Energy, BlueCap Partners, Toyo-Thai Corporation and Energy Technology Ventures. The funds will also help support Skyonic's other global projects, research and development and operations expenses. In addition the US Department of Energy's National Energy Technology Laboratory will provide US$28m towards the project.

The retrofit plant is expected to directly capture 83,000t of CO₂ from the Capitol Aggregates' emissions. In addition by using this captured CO₂ to make products that would otherwise generate additional CO₂ , the plant will offset an additional 220,000t/yr, once fully operational in 2014. Skyonic is also expected to create more than 200 jobs through the plant's construction and ongoing operations.

Skyonic's electrolytic SkyMine(R) technology will selectively capture CO₂, acid gases and heavy metals from the flue gas and mineralise the captured pollutants into safe, stable, solid products. Skyonic state that their carbon capture process does so at a lower cost than its competitors. The plant is expected to turn a profit from the sale of these products within three years.

Egypt: The Egyptian Electricity Transmission Company has signed a contract with Italgen, a subsidiary of global cement producer Italcementi Group, to produce electricity from wind energy. The contract authorises Italgen, which has been studying the possibility of incorporating wind technology since 2008, to become the first private investor to enter the Egyptian National Grid and construct a wind energy park in the area of Gulf El-Zeit, according to a statement.

Electrical energy generated from the wind park will be transmitted to plants run by Suez Cement, another Italcementi subsidiary, and will help in the reduction of CO2 emissions. The first phase in the project will represent an investment of around Euro120-130m. It will equate an installed capacity of 120MW and is expected to cover around 40% of Suez Cement's power needs. After the completion of the second phase, electrical energy is estimated to reach a capacity of 400MW.