Cement: A Real Headache For Climate Action

The cement industry generates around 8% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions. It's one of the major global contributors to climate change, along with electricity and heat production, transportation, industry, and food production. However, this industry presents a double dilemma: You can't quit cement, and cement can't (completely) quit CO2.

In this article, you'll find the complete answers to these questions:

• What is cement? It's one of the main components of concrete, the most widely used construction material in the world.
• Why does cement emit so much CO2? Because it's produced from a calcination reaction. Also, its production requires high temperatures (achieved by burning fossil fuels).
• Which countries have high cement emissions? Mostly China (but it may have peaked).
• Have cement emissions been reduced? Yes, around 18% in the past few decades.
• How far can cement emissions be cut? To meet the 2ºC target of the Paris Agreement, we need cement to cut down a further 24%. Going beyond that will be challenging, and depending on new technologies and carbon capture.
• Can "novel" cements cut emissions? Yes, if they grow from niche products to large-scale market alternatives to Portland clinker. 
• What are the barriers to low-carbon cements? The main ones are market resistance in an (understandably) conservative environment and cost.
• Can cement demand be reduced? Yes. As always, we'll need political will.
• Are cement emissions regulated? Not quite yet.
• Is the cement industry taking action? Producers have agreed to do so.

British website Carbon Brief returns with another fantastic Q&A session, conducted this time by Jocelyn Timperley (I already piqed one of her pieces here). The point of this kind of article is not to tell a story, but to give the necessary elements of analysis to understand other stories out there and, more or less, the big picture. I am yet to find an outlet better at that than Carbon Brief.