Editorial comment
Is it too soon to talk about carbon capture again? The topic seems inescapable; every month, just as I begin to put pen to paper (or, more accurately, finger to keyboard) to write a ‘Comment’, carbon capture finds its way back into the cement industry headlines.
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This month’s excuse to discuss the ‘holy grail’ of emissions reduction technologies handily arrived in my inbox just after I had begun my usual routine of staring at a blank Word document in the hope that this would somehow inspire the roughly 500 (hopefully relevant) words needed to fill this space. I’m not going to question a method that works…
The ‘excuse’ in question was actually a serious opinion piece written by Koen Coppenholle, CEO of CEMBUREAU (the European cement association), on the issues surrounding the utilisation aspect of Carbon Capture, Utilisation, & Storage (CCUS), and the need for a discussion about the EU regulatory environment.
Coppenholle points out that, ultimately, CCUS is going to need to be responsible for capturing 42% of the cement industry’s CO2 emissions by 2050 – the unavoidably carbon intensive nature of cement production means that “even if we push hard on all other decarbonisation levers, carbon capture is indispensable to meet our carbon neutrality ambitions.”
The most recent concerns stem from the EU Commission’s December 2021 statement that “fossil carbon should be replaced by more sustainable streams of recycled carbon from waste, sustainable biomass and directly from the atmosphere.” At first glance, that seems reasonable enough. However, when coupled with the Commission’s draft Delegated Act from earlier this year, which rules out the production of synthetic fuels made with CO2 from industrial sources beyond 2035, the practicability of carbon utilisation (already one of the trickier parts of CCUS) is jeopardised.
Coppenholle makes the problem clear: “There are currently major CO2 utilisation projects under development – some of which are actually supported by the EU’s own ETS Innovation Fund – in the sector to develop synthetic fuels. These involve highly significant CAPEX and OPEX, and are planned on a return on investments of several decades […] why would the EU proceed with legislation that endangers the business case for a key decarbonisation avenue for the cement and transport sector altogether?”
This wouldn’t be the first time that well-meaning regulation has hindered, rather than helped, the industry’s progress towards net zero. As I discussed in an article for our WCT2022 supplement (“Taking The Fast Track To Green Cement”, pp. 14 – 17), Ecocem was faced with significant regulatory hurdles when using GGBS-based concrete for the Grand Paris Express project. Despite the GGBS product offering equivalent, and in some cases superior, performance with a lower carbon footprint, outdated classification standards meant that the company ultimately had to jump through various hoops including applying for a European Technical Assessment.
If the cement industry is to achieve net zero, the regulatory environment will play just as important a role as the technologies being used. Only through continued discussion and collaboration between industry and legislators can the right framework for the future be built.
