Displaying items by tag: Getting the Numbers Right

Readers may have noticed the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27) is currently taking place at Sharm El Sheikh in Egypt. Many of the cement companies, suppliers and related associations are present at the annual jamboree and getting stuck in. For example, Holcim’s chief sustainability officer Magali Anderson was scheduled on 8 November 2022 to discuss solutions to decarbonise the built environment at the event’s Building Pavilion, Cemex’s chief executive officer Fernando A González took part in the First Movers Coalition (FMC) panel, FLSmidth is down for a number of talks and both the Global Cement and Concrete Association (GCCA) and World Cement Association are busy too.

Stone cold progress, if any, from the conference is yet to emerge although there is still time given that the event runs until 18 November 2022. No doubt some sort of ‘big message’ style international commitment or plan will emerge from the haggling. However, on the cement sector side, the biggest story so far has been the FMC plan for some of its members to procure at least 10% near-zero cement and concrete for its projects by 2030. Both Holcim and Cemex were founding members of the collation of companies that intend to use their purchasing power to support sustainable technologies in hard to abate sectors. Commitments for the aviation, shipping, steel and trucking sectors were set at COP26 in Glasgow, aluminium and CO₂ removal followed in May 2022 and chemicals and concrete were scheduled for November 2022. The latter has started to happen with the formation of the FMC’s cement and concrete group. Companies involved include ETEX, General Motors, Ørsted, RMZ Corporation and Vattenfall. Of these, Sweden-based energy producer Vattenfall has publicly said it is going for the 10% near-zero cement and concrete target by 2030.

Table 1: Net CO₂ emission intensity (kgCO2/t) for cement production at selected large cement producers.

While we wait for more announcements to escape from Sharm El Sheikh it might be worth reflecting upon one of the targets some of the cement companies have set themselves for 2030. Table 1 above compares the net CO₂ emission intensity for cement production at some of the large cement producers. It doesn’t tell us much, other than that the CO₂ emission intensity for these companies was in the region of 550 - 600kgCO₂/t of cementitious material in 2021. This compares to 580kgCO₂/t in 2020 for the GCCA’s Getting the Numbers Right (GNR) data for the companies it covers. The companies featured in Table 1 are all aiming – or appear to be aiming – for 475 - 525kgCO₂/t by 2030. This may not sound like much but it has and will require hard work, innovation, investment and risk on the part of the cement producers. This is also before carbon capture, utilisation and/or storage (CCUS) units will have been built at most cement plants. Yes, until the CO₂ emission intensity goes to down to zero, if cement production volumes keep rising sufficiently then total gross CO₂ emissions from the cement industry will also increase. Yet, gross CO₂ emissions from cement production are likely to peak sometime between now and 2030 if they haven’t already.

One sobering fact to end with is that 1990 is now further in the past than 2050 is in the future. If you can remember George Bush Sr as US president or you saw the film Goodfellas at the cinema then that’s the amount of time we have left to reach net zero. The global economic shocks of the post-coronavirus period and the war in Ukraine are stressing the world’s climate targets more than ever before. Let’s see how COP27 reacts to this. So far though, serious commitments to using low-carbon cement and concrete from big companies are a useful step to entrenching these products in the market.

World: A Systems Change Lab report on the state of climate change action has warned that the global cement industry is making insufficient progress towards its 2030 climate change targets and that a step-change in action is required. It recorded the carbon intensity of global cement production at 635kgCO₂/t in 2018 with the 2030 target of no more than 370kgCO₂/t. The rate of change over the previous five years was reported as being 2.9% but an annual rate of change of 22.5% would now be required to meet the 2030 target.

It also noted that emissions intensity from the cement industry had actually increased slightly in recent years. It reached this conclusion by using a different methodology from the Getting the Numbers Right (GNR) project. Instead it estimated the global emissions intensity by using global data on process emissions and energy data from the International Energy Agency and the GNR.

The report said that the cement sector would need to go beyond traditional mitigation options such as improving energy efficiency and switching fuels to meet its climate commitments. However, carbon capture utilisation and/or storage (CCUS) and novel cements were described as costly and immature. In its view, “Decarbonisation in the long term thus will depend on significant investments in research, development, and demonstration, alongside efforts to create a demand for low-carbon cements and policies to support investment in decarbonisation technologies.” It described both strategies as, “not yet fully mature in terms of technology development, costs and scaling.” The ‘critical enablers’ it identified to help the cement sector meet its target included stricter regulations, increased demand for low-carbon cement and investment in pilot and industrial scale projects looking at novel cements.

Overall, the report said that change towards averting climate change across 40 key areas in power generation, buildings, industry, transport, land use, coastal zone management and agriculture was not happening fast enough and that none were on track to meet their respective 2030 targets. Change was happening but not at the required pace. Systems Change Lab is a collaboration between the High-Level Climate Champions, Climate Action Tracker, ClimateWorks Foundation, the Bezos Earth Fund and World Resources Institute.