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Editorial comment

At the end of January, Director of the World Cement Association (WCA), Emir Adiguzel gave a presentation at the WCA’s 6th General Assembly on the global outlook for the cement industry in 2023. After the relative demand spike that was observed as global construction began to ramp up once again post pandemic, Adiguzel cited tighter monetary policies, increased sea freight rates, and volatile energy prices as the external conditions which he expects to coalesce to make 2023 a “difficult year” for the cement industry.


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Hoping to avoid this fate, are those firms focused on capturing the cleantech market for low-carbon cementitious materials that can satisfy the growing demand for solutions which can provide the same structural characteristics as ordinary Portland cement (OPC) and are suitable for mass production, whilst offering reduced carbon intensity.

One such announcement recently came from the startup Sublime Systems, which has secured US$40 million in Series A funding, via the venture capital firm Lowercarbon Capital, to electrify and scale its decarbonised cement production. Sublime Systems describes its new offering as the first decarbonised cement to not only eliminate the inherent carbon emissions associated with calcining limestone, but also the fossil fuel emissions that are released when generating the high temperatures required for this decarbonation process.

A closer look at the details of this innovation reveals that this new process involves an electrolyser, which produces cement at ambient temperatures, using a variety of abundant calcium sources. The rationale here is to utilise co-founders Yet-Ming Chiang and Leah Ellis’s recent breakthrough in ambient temperature electrochemical calcination to extract calcium using electricity rather than heat. Crucially, this process is compatible with any mineral containing calcium, including ones that – unlike limestone – do not release CO2 when calcined.

Another similar movement towards a commercially viable, low-carbon cement was made by Prometheus Materials in June 2022, who raised US$8 million in Series A funding to begin the commercial production of an alternative to OPC. The strategy was to replace the quarried limestone used in traditional cement production with a biogenic, algae-based limestone, pioneered by scientists at the University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder). Whilst this approach does not eliminate the carbon emissions released during calcination itself, or those associated with generating the temperatures required for calcination, these emissions would theoretically be offset by the amount of carbon that is sequestered by the algae via photosynthesis during its lifetime. What’s more this method appears to be scalable, with the team at CU Boulder estimating that 1 – 2 million acres of open ponds (1% of the land used in the US to grow corn) would be needed to meet the country’s entire annual cement demand.

Both of these developments represent novel approaches to decarbonising the cement industry, and are firmly focused on the industrial scalability of their processes. The implementation of innovations such as these will be an integral part of cement’s decarbonisation journey. For more discussion around green innovations in the cement industry, be sure to join us on 22nd March for the fourth edition of World Cement’s EnviroTech virtual conference. Register free of charge, here.