UK: The World Economic Forum and the Global Cement and Concrete Association (GCCA), in collaboration with Boston Consulting Group (BCG), have released a Mission Possible Partnership Report which identifies the nations that are prioritising green public procurement. These are the Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, France, the UK, and select US states. The report titled ‘Low-Carbon Concrete and Construction - A Review of Green Public Procurement Programmes’ identifies a framework for how these six countries are demonstrating leadership in green public procurement of concrete and construction.

The first component of the framework is the foundation, which includes establishing standards for reporting emissions, databases and tools for tracking emissions and establishes baselines. The second part of the framework, procurement polices, builds upon and reinforces the foundation by setting policies that require environmental disclosures, mandate carbon limits, and incentivise low-carbon design, and use of low-carbon materials.

Approximately 7% of global carbon emissions come from cement, and about half of the cement used globally is procured by the public sector. Governments also spend US$11tn/yr on procurement, about 12% of global gross domestic product (GDP) and regulate the construction industry via building codes. Therefore, governments play a critical role in driving demand to decarbonise the concrete and construction sector to achieve net zero goals.

Matt Rogers, the chief executive officer of the Mission Possible Project said “The demand signals in the market for green industrial products are among the most important opportunities to accelerate the path to net zero across industrial sectors. For material sectors like cement and concrete, government procurement practices will play an especially important role. This report summarises the current best practices in government procurement for green cement across multiple markets. Insights like these provide the government procurement professionals practical tools and technical insights that they can use today to create demand-pull for the most innovative low carbon cement and concrete offerings in the market.”

US: Sweden-based Bruks Siwertell has commissioned a Siwertell 490 F-type ship unloader at Colonial Group’s Georgia Kaolin Terminals in Savannah, Georgia. The unloader has a rated cement handling capacity of 800t/hr, discharging vessels of up to 55,000dwt.

US: The Portland Cement Association (PCA) has opposed a proposed federal temporary suspension to a petrol tax. PCA president and chief executive officer (CEO) Mike Ireland said, “Pausing the federal gas tax is the wrong decision at the wrong moment. Gas tax revenues fund the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), which is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to remake American industry and infrastructure with sustainability at its core. Removing the funding from the gas tax will strangle the IIJA before it is even up and running.”

The passage of the IIJA has coincided with PCA's launch of its Roadmap to Carbon Neutrality, which outlines the steps needed to achieve carbon neutrality across the entire cement-concrete-construction value chain by 2050. The PCA says that implementing the changes in its roadmap will require ‘significant’ funding such as those generated from the petrol tax.

Austria: RHI Magnesita says it has released CO₂ emissions data for all of its 200,000 products. Technical Data Sheets now include a field ‘Environmental Indicators’ in which the CO₂ equivalent emission of one metric ton of the product is listed. The calculation method for these indicators is developed with and supervised on an on-going basis by an external organisation under the principles of ISO standards. All greenhouse gases ‘cradle-to-gate’, from raw material extraction to production to packaging to gate are considered in these CO₂ footprint calculations.

Chief sustainability officer Gustavo Franco said "This project marks an important milestone towards a green transformation. Thus, one of RHI Magnesita's main targets is to significantly reduce emissions over the next few decades, with the long-term goal of achieving net-zero operations in all areas of the company. It is clear, that a solid basis for sustainable decisions and developments can only be achieved by creating a valid audited database."