Meeting the growing global demand for cement while shrinking the industry’s carbon footprint is one of the most significant challenges facing the construction and building materials sector today.
The world can’t live without cement, but also can’t ignore its high climate costs — cement production is responsible for about 8 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions — or be indifferent to the people, companies, and communities that rely on the industry for their livelihoods.
With two-thirds of the global population projected to live in cities by 2050, the demand for green, resilient, and climate-smart building materials will surge. Some promising new eco-friendly building materials, such as geopolymer cement made from industrial waste like fly ash or slag are in development, but they remain in early stages, are costly, and are years away from widespread scalability, particularly in emerging economies. That underscores the urgent need to decarbonize the production of existing materials for sustainable development. Only this way can we support future housing and infrastructure needs while protecting the planet.
A Cement Decarbonization Tool
Finance organizations like the International Finance Corporation (IFC) play a crucial role in supporting these efforts — both for new materials and for driving sustainable practices across the existing industry. The biggest challenge for cement companies today is how to implement decarbonization strategies while maintaining the material's affordability, durability, and scalability for global construction needs.
A new tool developed by IFC aims to help cement companies responsibly and cost-effectively decarbonize. It enables them to analyze unique operational factors that contribute to their greenhouse gas emissions. And it helps them devise clear and customized strategies to mitigate emissions while enhancing efficiency, productivity, and savings.
Votorantim Cimentos, a Brazilian-based global cement producer, and a client of IFC, is one of the companies applying the tool to develop its abatement strategy and expand its capacity.
“The tool is very simple and really helpful,” said Fabio Cirilo, the eco-efficiency and energy manager of Votorantim Cimentos. “We can see how our main initiatives are working and the impact they will have on our decarbonization journey.”
Using the tool, Votorantim Cimentos has created a marginal abatement cost curve that shows the cost and potential emissions reduction for different carbon abatement measures. That data is helping the company’s planners visualize the cost-effectiveness of their CO2 reduction strategies at their Salto de Pirapora plant in the state of Sao Paulo, which employs about 700 workers.
Shifting to Alternative Fuels and Green Cement Solutions
Currently, more than 30 percent of the fuels used at the Salto de Pirapora plant are alternative fuels, consisting of biomass, wood chips, used tires and waste products. IFC’s cement tool is helping the company understand how to better utilize alternative fuels to meet customer demands.
“We see more and more customers asking us for low carbon products,” said Cirilo, explaining that the company expects to double the Salto de Pirapora plant’s capacity to use alternative fuels.
The shift to alternative fuels in cement production is essential if the world is going to meet the Paris Agreement’s climate targets and keep pace with the demand for new housing and infrastructure. To reduce the cement industry’s carbon emissions, which is primarily due to the calcination process in the kiln where temperatures reach about 1500°C, a number of steps can be taken right now. Shifting to alternative fuels is one method of shrinking the industry’s global footprint.
A key advantage of IFC’s tool is that it can be tailored to a company’s unique circumstances. In addition to replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy sources, the tool can help companies explore the impact of increasing renewables in the power mix, which can reduce overall greenhouse gas (emissions, or analyze the use of blended cement, substituting clinker with lower greenhouse gas alternatives. Other carbon-reducing strategies such as waste heat recovery, which allows companies to generate power from exhaust gases, can be analyzed using the tool. Furthermore, it helps companies gauge the greenhouse gas and cost value of upgrading equipment — like modifying kiln feed systems or clinker coolers.
As the world’s population grows larger and becomes more urban, infrastructure needs are accelerating — especially in the emerging economies of Africa, India, and Latin America. Cement demand is projected to rise by 12–23 percent by 2050 compared to 2020 levels, according to the International Energy Agency. To stay within the targets of the Paris Agreement on climate change, the cement sector must reduce its annual emissions by at least 16 percent by 2030. This is no small feat.
But with resources like IFC’s cement decarbonization tool — developed with input from industry experts and vetted by the European Cement Research Academy — decarbonizing heavy industry is moving a step closer to reality.
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