In the age of Google, road maps are pretty much obsolete. So it’s fitting that the concrete industry is so big on road maps. While it is not obsolete, it is facing an existential carbon crisis, with the industry responsible for roughly 8% of worldwide emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2).
Treehugger recently wrote about the American Portland Cement Association’s (PCA) road map. Now the Global Cement and Concrete Association (GCCA) has released its version. The GCCA is international and represents close to 50% of the world’s cement production capacity, and is run out of London. In advance of the United Nation’s COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, the GCCA isn’t pulling punches about hitting tough targets:
The approach taken by the GCCA is pretty much the same as that taken by the American industry, in a much prettier package with better graphs that are much easier to understand. Unlike the PCA, it is also going after intermediate targets for 2030:
It’s actually all laid out in this one chart, with savings in clinker production, meaning mainly the heat required by the chemistry of cement manufacture. besides thermal efficiency, they will use “alternative fuels” like waste materials, some of which are problematic.
The GCCA is a bit more upfront about the elephant in the room: what the PCA called the “Chemical Fact of Life,” or in other words, the CO2 emitted in calcination or turning calcium carbonate into calcium oxide. That’s the big purple square, 36% of emissions, 1,370 metric megatons in 2050 to be dealt with through carbon capture and utilization/storage (CCUS). The GCCA doesn’t try to sweep it under the rug.
The GCCA shows all the CCUS projects happening now, with a lot more action in Europe than in North America. It is not clear if they all work, or how much CO2 is actually being stored. As they say, it is early in this game.
But here it is, a plan for serious reductions in carbon emissions from almost every step of the process. The green wedge at the top is the savings from “Efficiency in Design and Construction”:
This is where it seems like wishful thinking. Can good design really deliver 22% savings? That kind of low-hanging fruit would have been grabbed already.
Being the GCCA, it does not suggest we use less of the stuff. In fact, it predicts that its use will grow from 14 billion cubic meters per year today to 20 billion cubic meters in 2050. The GCCA doesn’t tell us where in the world we will find enough limestone, sand, and aggregate to make that much concrete.
The GCCA is really good at this. It talks about how cement and concrete align with the U.N.’s sustainable development goals and will save the world. It states: “Durable and cost-effective buildings and infrastructure are central to the transformation of communities out of poverty, providing education at all levels and combatting food waste” and how “transport infrastructure made with concrete provides market access for local food producers, promotes access to education and creates economic opportunities and well-being.”
But it also claims that “the unique reflective properties and thermal mass of concrete contribute to the energy efficiency for our built environment” which is questionable. And “the cement and concrete industry is at the heart of the circular economy, using by-products from other industries as raw material or fuel, and by providing a product that can be repurposed or recycled,” which is almost laughable.
Like the PCA, the GCCA has done a serious amount of work to address the issue of getting to net-zero by 2050. Is it plausible or realistic? Or should we just look at alternatives that have it easier? After all, timber is renewable. The steel industry has figured out new chemistry, as has the aluminum industry. The concrete industry has to chip away at every step of its process and still can’t get there without vast amounts of CCUS.
There is just no way around the fact that in the end, we have to just use less of the stuff, fewer new highways and parking garages, fewer new buildings when we can fix old ones. Twenty billion cubic meters of net-zero concrete in 2050? It’s just beyond my comprehension.
