Surging Substitution Rates

The urge to increase substitution rates is a constant challenge for the cement industry. As 2025 begins, the milestone year of 2030 draws closer, a year which many early adopters have taken for ambitious targets in terms of CO2 reduction. Despite numerous success stories, the majority of the industry remains far from achieving even 25% thermal substitution, largely due to the absence of key drivers for change. In many parts of the world, the waste management industry differs significantly from the model seen in Europe. Additionally, the commercial incentive related to the EU Emissions Trading System (EU-ETS) is lacking in several regions. Nevertheless, a number of serious industry players across various continents are actively considering waste imports from Europe in an effort to be first to market. It is no secret that there are already players in Central Africa, for example, importing waste derived fuels from Europe to substitute their fossil fuels.

In the September 2024 issue of World Cement, N+P reported on the progress in increasing thermal substitution rates (TSR) through the use of milled fuels, alongside the continual development of quality control standards necessitated by the complex nature of waste-derived materials. In recent months, demand for milled fuel produced at the commercial milling operation in the UK has remained strong, with growing interest not only from the cement sector but from other industries as well. Further details on this topic will be addressed later in this article. The urgency to move away from fossil fuels continues to spread across sectors, and a significant increase in offtake by non-cement industries has been observed this year.

Competition for alternative feedstocks

The relevance for the cement industry lies in the fact that many alternative fuel (AF) consumers are sourcing from the same supply pool. Although this pool remains substantial, increased competition reduces selectivity regarding feedstock quality. Toward 2030, a growing number of new entrants are expected to target similar materials, thereby increasing pressure on both the availability and preparation of alternative feedstocks.

The chemical industry is investing heavily in new technologies, primarily around pyrolysis based technologies, and new sites are popping up across Europe with the aim of processing the ‘difficult’ plastics into pyrolysis oil (and the like). Although these technologies have proven to be slow starters, and specification-wise there are certainly challenges, it underlines the industry’s demand for alternative materials. These developments may be seen as complementary in some respects. For example, removing additional polyolefin plastics from the feedstock stream can enhance biogenic content. However, such removal also results in a decrease in calorific value – an unavoidable trade-off. In Spain, the first waste gasification plant was recently announced in Tarragona. Once operational, the facility is expected to process a substantial portion of the Barcelona region’s waste feedstocks for use in the production of synthetic gas for the chemical industry.

Needless to say, this underlines what N+P observed in the December 2024 issue of World Cement; the traditional ‘clean’ commercial and industrial feedstocks will be the low hanging fruit for other applications, so the need to be able to clean other feedstocks like MSW is becoming even more important. On the bright side of this development, ETS is coming for the energy from waste industry, which is still exempt from paying ETS to date. This means that the fossil part of the waste will be taxed, and this will undoubtedly have an effect on the gate fees.

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Read the article online at: https://www.worldcement.com/special-reports/16062025/surging-substitution-rates/