If the cement industry were a country, it would be the third-biggest generator of greenhouse gasses, behind China and the United States. The goal now is to decarbonize one of the most common materi…
, which says cement companies in California must produce 40% less carbon by the end of 2035 and hit net zero by the close of 2045. That’s where innovations — like the one Heliogen is testing in Lancaster, and others in the works around the globe — could come into play.
There’s still room to use less cement without halting development or replacing the trusted material entirely, argues Paul Adeleke, spokesman for the Global Cement and Concrete Association, which set its own carbon-free goal of 2050. It takes lots of fuel to get towers and rotary kilns to such high temperatures. And, for now, most cement plants rely on fossil fuels such as coal, natural gas or oil to reach those temperatures, with 60% used in the preheating stage and the other 40% used in the kilns. Burning that fuel creates a third of the carbon emitted by the cement industry, and trading out oil or coal for alternative fuels could eliminate hundreds of millions of tons of carbon each year.
But even if cement plants could be converted entirely to renewable fuel sources, their carbon emissions would be reduced by only a third. The chemical reaction triggered by calcination, when limestone is converted to clinker, produces the other two-thirds of the carbon dioxide emitted by the cement industry. And that part of the equation is even trickier to solve.
To shore up demand for green cement, former Secretary of State John Kerry, now the U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, announced during the United Nations’ COP27 climate conference in Egypt earlier this month that companies, including General Motors, have committed to buying at least 10% “near zero” concrete by 2030. Kerry said the move “will drive critical investment in next-generation technologies.
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