Displaying items by tag: Department of Energy

US: Sublime Systems has completed negotiations with the US Department of Energy for a US$87m grant to build a ‘clean’ cement manufacturing plant in Holyoke, Massachusetts. The company will now commence site engineering, design and permitting. The Holyoke plant will demonstrate full-scale operations of its cement manufacturing process when production begins in 2026. Sublime Systems expects to create 70 - 90 jobs once its new plant is operational.

US: Terra CO₂ has received a US$52.6m federal grant from the US Department of Energy to support the construction of a new plant in Magna, Utah, that will produce up to 240,000t/yr of supplementary cementitious materials using mining waste from the nearby Kennecott copper mine. This method reportedly aims to cut CO₂ emissions by 70% per tonne of traditional cement replaced, according to the company’s CEO Bill Yearsley. The project is expected to create 61 jobs.

US: California-based climate technology startup Furno Materials has been awarded US$20m by the US Department of Energy (DOE) for a new ‘low-carbon’ cement production facility in Chicago. The facility will use recycled industrial byproducts to produce cement, with the aim to reduce carbon emissions ‘significantly’, according to the Chicago Business Journal. This investment is part of a broader DOE initiative that is funding 14 projects totalling US$428m, in order to address clean-energy supply chains and boost US manufacturing. The project is expected to create 80 jobs.

US: Heidelberg Materials North America has finalised award negotiations with the US Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations. The Mitchell cement plant in Indiana will receive US$300,000 to begin the first phase of its decarbonisation project, part of a broader initiative of up to US$500m in DOE funding to support full-scale carbon capture, transport and storage developments. The Mitchell cement plant has tripled its previous production capacity, with this project aiming to capture and process about 2Mt/yr of CO₂.

Chris Ward, president and CEO of Heidelberg Materials North America, said "This critical milestone of bringing our project under award with the US Department of Energy is a significant step in building the first full-scale application of carbon capture and storage for the cement industry in the US.”

Australia: Woodside Energy and Cemex have invested US$6.7m in Melbourne-based KC8 Capture Technologies to support its efforts in achieving net zero emissions via carbon capture and storage.

KC8 is partnering with Cement Australia to construct a commercial demonstration plant in Gladstone, Queensland, aiming to capture 15t/day of CO₂. A partnership with Cemex aims to capture over 100t/day of CO₂ at one of its major plants. Additionally, KC8 plans a commercial pilot at the US Department of Energy’s National Carbon Capture Centre to capture 10-15t/day of CO₂ from natural gas combustion flue gas. The initiative has also secured US$6m from Low Emission Technology Australia and US$11.26m from the US government.

Executive director Greg Ross said "The funds will be used to expand KC8’s team and expedite deployment of its technology into hard-to-abate industries, such as cement – through a number of key projects."

US: Queens Carbon has secured a US$14.5m grant from the US Department of Energy under its SCALEUP program. The funding will support the pilot of Queens Carbon's low temperature, ‘zero CO₂’ emission technology at an existing cement production site. Queens Carbon's supplementary cementitious materials, which replace 20-50% of the high-CO₂ binder in cement, will be produced at a pilot plant with a capacity of 10t/day.

CEO Daniel Kopp said “This SCALEUP grant is a tremendous step forward on our path to commercialisation. Partnering with the Department of Energy and a major cement industry player to deploy, operate, and optimise our 10t/day pilot plant will put us on an accelerated path to gigatonne-scale CO₂ reductions.”

US: A research team from Lehigh University has won a three-year, US$2m grant from the Department of Energy's industrial efficiency and decarbonisation office for a project on concrete decarbonisation. The team, including Carlos Romero, director of Lehigh's Energy Research Centre, aims to develop a sustainable concrete binder using calcined clay, reducing emissions associated with Ordinary Portland Cement production. The project collaborates with Buzzi Unicem USA and focuses on processing and testing calcined clay to mimic the properties of conventional cement.

Lehigh's team will explore various low-grade calcined clays, supplied by Buzzi, testing their compressive strength and durability. The goal is to halve the CO₂ emissions of traditional concrete mixes.

Chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Shamim Pakzad said "I am excited about the expansion of the research portfolio of CEE departments into this area of greener cement, which opens many opportunities for future research and implementation in industry."

The US Department of Energy (DOE) announced a US$1.6bn investment in the cement sector this week. The funding was part of a total of US$6bn for 33 projects in over 20 states to decarbonise energy-intensive industries also including chemicals and refining, iron and steel, aluminium and metals, food and beverages, glass, process heat applications and pulp and paper. The DOE was keen to link the money to “the President’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act.” Politics is never far away it seems! The projects are part of the Industrial Demonstrations Program, managed by DOE’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED).

Table 1: Summary of US Department of Energy funding announced on March 2024 to decarbonise cement and concrete production

Table 1 above shows the main approaches each of the projects aim to use. The two most expensive ones involve carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) at Heidelberg Materials US’ Mitchell cement plant in Indiana and National Cement’s Lebec plant in California respectively. In a complimentary press release Chris Ward, the CEO of Heidelberg Materials North America, said “This substantial federal funding investment will help create the first full-scale deployment of carbon capture and storage on a cement plant in the US.” The proposed CCS unit at the plant will capture around 2Mt/yr of CO₂ from 2030. If Ward’s forecast is accurate (and no one beats them to it), then Heidelberg Materials will likely have set up the first full-scale CCS units at cement plants in both North America and Europe. This will be a significant achievement. The National Cement project, by contrast, is a mixed bag of approaches to decarbonising cement production that follows the multi-lever approach advocated for in many of the industry net-zero roadmaps. It intends to use agricultural by-products such as pistachio shells, as alternatives fuels to lower the fuel-based emissions, calcined clay to lower the clinker factor and CCS to capture the remaining 950,000t/yr of CO₂ emissions.

The other projects either involve using calcined clay or substituting limestone with calcium silicate. The Summit Materials proposal is noteworthy because it aims to build four clay calcination units in locations in Maryland, Georgia and Texas. None of these appear to be near Summit’s (or Cementos Argos’) cement plants. This suggests that the company may be intending to use calcined clay in ready-mixed concrete production. The Roanoke Cement Company calcined clay project will be baseEuropead at its cement plant in Troutville, Virginia.

The remaining two grant recipients, Brimstone and Sublime Systems, will both test the companies’ different methods of manufacturing cement by using calcium silicate instead of limestone. Brimstone’s method produces ordinary Portland cement (OPC) and supplementary cementitious materials (SCM). The company said in July 2023 that its OPC met the ASTM C150 standards. However, the company has released less information about its actual process. Sublime Systems’ uses an electrolysis approach to create its ASTM C1157-compliant cement. It calls this ‘ambient temperature electrochemical calcination.’

Investment on the same scale of the DOE has also been happening in Europe. In July 2023, for example, the European Commission announced an investment of Euro3.6bn in clean tech projects to be funded from the proceeds of the European Union emissions trading scheme (ETS). This was the third call for large-scale projects following previous announcements of recipients in 2021 and 2022. Euro1.6bn of the third call funding went towards cement and refining projects including five cement and lime projects in Belgium, Croatia, Germany and Greece. The money granted for each of these schemes was in the region of Euro115 - 235m.

Both the US and Europe are throwing serious finance at the cement industry to try and kickstart the various pathways towards net zero. They are also doing it in different ways, with the US aiming to boost its economy by onshoring sustainable industry, and Europe hoping to fund its approach via carbon taxation. Government-driven decarbonisation investment for cement in other large countries and regions around the world appears to be lagging behind the US and Europe but these may spring up as net zero targets are set, roadmaps drawn up and government policy formulated. These places could also benefit from watching what works and does not work elsewhere first. Back in the US and Europe the next tricky part of this process will be bridging the gap between government subsidy and commercial viability.

US: The US Department of Energy has selected four cement producers to receive funding under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act.

Heidelberg Materials US secured up to US$500m for its planned 2Mt/yr carbon capture project at the Mitchell cement plant in Indiana. National Cement also received up to US$500m, for its Lebec Net Zero limestone calcined clay cement (LC3) project in California. Summit Materials received up to US$216m for a series of clay calcination projects in Georgia, Maryland and Texas. Lastly, Roanoke Cement will receive up to US$61.7m for an LC3 project at its Troutville cement plant in Virginia.  These projects also involve developing a training, education and certification consortium in the cement sector.

Portland Cement Association (PCA) president and CEO Mike Ireland said "This funding is a welcome acknowledgement from the government that America's cement manufacturers are taking ambitious and significant steps toward reaching carbon neutrality. This will move the needle closer to achieving what industry considers the 'heavyweight' of carbon solutions: carbon capture utilisation and storage (CCUS). Once established nationwide, CCUS will greatly accelerate cement manufacturers' charge toward net zero."

Senior vice president of government affairs Sean O'Neill added “From passage of the Bipartisan Energy Act of 2020 to securing funding through the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, today's announcement is another major milestone in the cement industry's decarbonisation efforts. The PCA is committed to continuing to work with policymakers to ensure the regulatory environment facilitates rather than impedes these and future investments.

US: Alternative cement developer Sublime Systems has entered award negotiations with the US Department of Energy for a grant worth up to US$87m. Gulf Oil & Gas News has reported that Sublime Systems plans to build an electrolysis-based cement plant in Holyoke, Massachusetts. The department’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations would provide any eventual funding under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act. Sublime Systems’ plant is one of 33 scalable decarbonisation solutions in energy-intensive industries selected for potential funding.

CEO Leah Ellis said “Access to sufficient capital for industrial-scale demonstrations is the single biggest obstacle preventing breakthrough innovations from reaching the scale humanity needs to combat the climate crisis. The Department of Energy has cleared this obstacle through funding from OCED’s Industrial Demonstrations Program, embracing its unique role in supporting the deployment of the decarbonised technologies of tomorrow. We look forward to collaborating with them on funding our first commercial manufacturing scale-up, which will ship our clean cement while creating meaningful economic opportunities for the surrounding community.”