Toward Net Zero Concrete – Collaborating for an enabling policy framework

Concrete’s essential role in the modern world
Cement and concrete both literally and metaphorically lay the foundations for modern societies to grow and prosper. Manufactured with locally available materials and by-products, cement is the essential component of concrete that holds together houses and infrastructure, forming the backbone of economies and societies around the world. 

The nature of concrete as the building material of choice lies in its availability, affordability, reliability, versatility and simplicity of use, in addition to the durability and resilience it bestows upon structures built with it. It has inherent safety qualities that make it fire, weather and flood resistant. It provides thermal mass in buildings and rigidity in road construction, both of which reduce demand for energy. Moreover, the concrete used in our cities and infrastructure absorbs CO2 during its lifetime, making our built environment an effective and permanent carbon sink. Concrete also underpins the clean energy transition, allowing us to build renewable energy sources, and enables the transition towards a net zero built environment.

Commitment towards net zero concrete
Cement, whose key raw material is quarried limestone that is heated to high temperatures in kilns, is the material that binds together all the ingredients of concrete. It is well known that the manufacturing of cement is a CO2 intensive process. 

Improving the carbon footprint of cement manufacture involves mitigating the CO2 directly emitted when limestone is heated and decomposes (known as process emissions). This represents 60% of emissions. The remaining 40% to be mitigated arises from direct and indirect energy emissions, i.e., the combustion of fuels required to generate the necessary heat for the process (direct emissions) and any emissions from the generation of electricity used (indirect emissions).

Cement manufacturing is rapidly decarbonising through the progressive elimination of fuel-related emissions, the use of innovative raw materials, embedding circularity across its operations and through the development of advanced process technologies like carbon capture usage and storage (CCUS). Over the past three decades, the industry has reduced its emissions proportionately by nearly a fifth.

The GCCA and its member companies, which represent 80% of the global cement industry volume outside of China, and also includes several large Chinese manufacturers, are committed to continuing to drive down the CO2 footprint of operations and products. In 2020, we announced our climate ambition – to provide society with carbon neutral concrete by 2050. This was the first time the industry came together at a global level to announce a commitment on this scale, building on the decades of emissions reductions the industry had already achieved. Since concrete is such an essential building block of the sustainable world of tomorrow, this is a crucial part of the world’s response to the climate emergency.

The industry is already working to achieve this and recognises the need to accelerate its actions today. It also recognises that the industry must have an active role in encouraging and engineering lower-carbon products and processes and in ensuring that our products are only used when they are needed. 

But the industry won’t be able to get there on its own. Lasting success depends on a set of specific policy actions at local, national and international levels, which help to:

• make low-carbon cement manufacturing investable

• stimulate demand for low-carbon concrete products, and

• create the infrastructure needed for a circular and net zero manufacturing environment.