Spain: Votorantim Cimentos Spain will invest €3.2m in a new clinker cooler at its Málaga plant, according to Alimarket. The upgrade will reportedly reduce thermal and electrical energy consumption and avoid approximately 11,000t/yr of CO₂ emissions. The project will receive a €725,960 subsidy from the regional government of Andalusia.

US: Oakland, California-based cleantech startup Brimstone has received a US Department of Energy grant worth up to US$189m to establish a plant with a capacity of 80,000t/yr of ‘green’ cement and 20,000t/yr of smelter-grade alumina, according to the San Francisco Business Times. The grant will be paid out in instalments and requires matching funds from new investments, loans and other sources.

The US$378m facility, which is still in the site selection phase, will be located near an existing quarry in order to mine calcium silicate rocks.

CEO Cody Finke said “We’re exclusively looking at brownfield sites. The goal is to build our own plant while utilising existing quarries to ensure a sustainable and economically viable operation.”

Brimstone plans to begin pilot operations in 2025 and aims to have the plant fully operational by the end of the decade. The company is currently testing its decarbonised cement with potential customers from its Oakland research and development facility.

France: Bouygues Construction and Ecocem have signed a partnership to facilitate the use of Ecocem’s low-carbon ACT cement technology in Bouygues Construction’s projects.

The collaboration involves three stages of testing and validation. First, Bouygues Construction will conduct independent laboratory tests to evaluate ACT’s performance. Next, structural concrete walls will be built at Bouygues Construction’s facilities in Chilly-Mazarin, France starting in early 2025, and monitored to ensure thorough testing. Finally, a full-scale mock-up, including all structural elements, will be constructed to assess the in-situ application of ACT technology.  The testing programme aims to integrate ACT technology into Bouygues Construction projects following successful validation.

US: The Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management has announced US$101m in funding for five projects to establish carbon capture, removal, and conversion test centres for cement plants and power facilities. The test centres aim to cost-effectively research and evaluate technologies to capture and convert CO₂ into products from utility and industrial sources, or by removing CO₂ from the atmosphere. The initiative aims to reduce CO₂ emissions, promote sustainable technologies and create job opportunities.

Notable projects include the University of Illinois in Urbana, which plans to design a test centre to evaluate carbon management technologies for the cement industry, and Holcim US, which intends to establish a Cement Carbon Management Innovation Centre at its Hagerstown facility in Maryland.

Brad Crabtree, assistant secretary for Fossil Energy and Carbon Management, said “Carbon management technologies such as carbon capture can significantly reduce emissions from fossil energy use and key industrial processes, like cement production. By investing in test centres, we are helping reduce barriers to commercial-scale deployment of carbon capture, conversion and removal technologies that will ultimately help reduce pollution and create jobs.”