Addressing Cement's Critical Challenge
Cement production accounts for 5-8% of global CO2e emissions, with emissions more than doubling since 2000. Over 80% of these emissions come from the calcination of limestone in clinker production, an emission-intensive process with no easy substitute. As demand for cement continues to grow, reducing its carbon footprint is a critical challenge.
Key decarbonization strategies focus on reducing clinker use, developing alternative chemistries, and scaling carbon capture technologies. However, adoption remains slow due to cost, infrastructure constraints, and regulatory uncertainty. The key question is: How can the industry accelerate the transition while maintaining performance and affordability?
Download Decarbonizing Cement below to explore innovative technologies, market barriers, and policy levers to accelerate the adoption of these solutions.
Four Key Points
Reducing emissions from the cement industry requires an “all-of-the-above” approach — not the discovery of a single silver bullet. This will include currently deployable measures like clinker substitution, energy efficiency, and alternative fuels, as well as alternative production methods, nascent technologies, and carbon capture.
Moves toward decarbonization are already happening fast within the cement industry, but there is a long way to go. In just the past few years, the uptake of alternative and lower-carbon materials in the cement and concrete industries has moved at an exponentially faster pace.
The take-up of lower-carbon cement will require collaboration and adaptation from the construction industry and regulators. The cement sector typically has a ten-to-twenty-year adoption cycle for new blends and materials—due in part to a need to update standards, and in part to a slow customer-adoption cycle.
Innovation will need to play a key role in lowering costs, especially in developing countries. Current costs of low-carbon technologies remain a significant hurdle, exacerbated by the higher cost of capital in many developing countries.
Who Pays for Cutting Carbon Out of Making Cement?
Industry incumbents must decide when and how to use new production methods while the old one remain profitable. Explore the rest of the content below.
Decarbonizing Cement: Six Key Points from Industry Leaders
Global carbon emissions from cement production have more than doubled since 2000, and they’re set to continue tracking their steady upward trend — unless cement - industry executives, entrepreneurs, and experts can agree on strategies to reduce them. Fortunately, that’s something many industry leaders are tackling now.