Elliot Mari, Industrial Transition Accelerator (ITA), outlines some affordable policies for decarbonising the cement industry.
Unlike some other sectors, such as petrochemicals or heavy transportation, it is fair to say that the technological pathway to deep decarbonisation of cement production has now crystallised around fundamentals. Although their relative importance fluctuates, global and regional cement roadmaps all acknowledge the need for:
- More efficient use of cement and concrete.
- Switching from fossil fuels to waste and biomass to generate heat.
- Reducing the average clinker content through the use of supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs).
- Carbon capture, either for utilisation or storage (CCUS), to tackle residual emissions.
Publications have also evidenced the massive investments needed to transform the cement industry, especially due to CCUS. While most in the industry believe that public funding will be needed to drive the transition, many early policy options with little or no direct financial support can be adopted. This article will illustrate three of these potentially impactful policies that require limited financial effort.
Enabling construction codes and standards to streamline the use of blended cements
Some types of SCMs are already commonly used for cement blending (e.g. limestone filler, blast furnace slag, pozzolans) and other very promising sources are emerging (e.g. calcined clay, recycled concrete, reclaimed coal fly ash). While blended cements usually do not pose a major technical challenge and can find areas to compete with ordinary portland cement, they are still far from their full potential deployment. Their penetration in the construction market has often been impeded by a slow evolution of building codes and product standards which tends to reflect the conservative nature of public and private stakeholders in the industry. Government intervention should focus on transitioning from the traditional recipe-based to the performance-based approach whereby SCMs and blended cements can be introduced to the market when demonstrating certain performance criteria. The Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) has recently published a guide with very practical recommendations for developing performance standards and specifications for concrete. Besides, given the high cost of CCUS and its slow deployment, reducing clinker production through SCMs will only alleviate the future reliance on carbon capture to address residual emissions.
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