Making Cement Sustainable: Carbon and Other Emissions

Geneva, 3 September 2007 - It is really a bit surprising that the Cement Sustainability Initiative (CSI) happened at all. When it began in the last year of last millennium, neither cement nor the cement industry was seen by green groups as a major environmental villain.

“Industry leaders could have kept their heads down and hoped not to be noticed in the fray over climate change,” said Björn Stigson, President of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD). “Instead they took the bold step of trying to make the entire industry more environmentally and socially friendly, not only in the area of greenhouse gas emissions, but other emissions, health and safety, and effects on neighbourhoods. I do not know of another example of such a major initiative by an entire industry.”

Producing cement does, after all, have huge sustainability issues. This article focuses on emissions and the CSI’s work in that area. The industry is energy-intensive; it accounts for around 5% of global CO2 emissions caused by human activity, and it is involved in a wide range of pollution and natural resource depletion issues.

With that in mind, in 1999, ten leading cement companies, representing a third of the world’s production, embarked on what became the CSI, a member-led programme of the WBCSD. The purpose was to find new ways for the industry to reduce its ecological footprint, understand its social contribution potential and increase stakeholder engagement. Today the CSI is a global effort by 18 cement producers, who have integrated sustainable development (SD) into their business strategies. As this article was going to press, the CSI was preparing its first five-year progress report.

The companies first hired the US-based, not-for-profit consulting firm, Battelle Memorial Institute, to carry out an independent review of the cement industry and suggest ways to meet its sustainability challenges. After two years

Battelle issued its report, and the CSI turned this into its own Agenda for Action, setting out implementation steps for the first five-year segment of a 20-year programme. Setting up taskforces to tackle key issues, companies researched and worked with stakeholders ranging from NGOs to governments to academia.

CO2 and climate change

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions remain the headline issue. While the public and environmentalists focus on the carbon released by the use of fossil fuels, such as oil and coal, half of the industry’s carbon emissions come from the chemical process of clinker production and only 40% from burning fuel.

Thus, the companies sought to become more efficient in GHG management, especially as the use of cement is increasing rapidly, particularly to support the rapid economic development of China and India.

The first step in management is measurement. The Agenda for Action pledged to work with stakeholders to develop a protocol for measuring and reporting CO2 emissions. The CSI has since been working with organisations such as the World Resources Institute (WRI) and others, to investigate public policy and market mechanisms for making meaningful reductions in CO2 emissions. In 2003, the Initiative released a protocol and specific guidelines for accounting and reporting CO2 emissions, in line with the existing GHG Protocol developed by WBCSD and WRI in 2001.

After two years of experience using the protocol, the climate and energy task force reviewed and updated emission factors for a number of traditional and alternative fuels, based on new measurements. The 2005 updated protocol incorporates accounting practices that allow for emission credits and trading to meet the requirements of current and future trading systems.

Each member company agreed to develop a climate change mitigation strategy and by 2006 to publish targets and an annual update on progress. This progress is measured by the number of companies using the tools set out in the protocol guidelines, developing climate change mitigation strategies, publishing their baseline emissions, and reporting annually as called for in the protocol. This is thought to be the first time an industry initiative adopted a voluntary and independently audited emissions protocol.

Database of CO2 emissions

As a next step, the CSI is building the first database of CO2 emissions from more than 1000 cement kilns to help policymakers worldwide better assess the influence of kiln technology, fuel selection, and plant location and age on plant performance and emissions management. The data are being collected from all installations of CSI member and participating companies for the years 1990, 2000 and 2005, and are being reported by everyone according to the updated version of the CO2 Protocol. The Asia Pacific Partnership (a government programme including the cement industry from the US, Japan, China, Korea, India, and Australia) has also adopted a similar approach, following the same reporting protocol.

The CSI CO2 database will supply statistical information on the energy and CO2 performance of clinker and cement production worldwide and regionally, and will aim to provide a sound factual basis for policy development, industry analysis, and progress reporting related to the cement industry.

Working with partners

The CSI works with policy-makers on issues related to GHG emissions, fuel selection, waste and micropollutant management. These policy partnerships have made the CSI members important players in the creation of policies affecting not only the cement industry but other energy use initiatives as well. Partners include the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA), WRI and consultants engaged by the European Commission to help develop the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS). Key elements of the CSI CO2 Protocol have been used in this process, and are being incorporated into the US Climate Leaders Program.

The CSI developed a paper outlining potential improvements to the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol, a paper refined following stakeholder feedback, and presented to the UN Executive Board for consideration. The Initiative has also worked with the Asia Pacific Partnership (AP6) in the Cement Sector Task Force, providing input into one of the working groups that contributed to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 4th Assessment Report on Climate Change published in 2007.

The CSI is developing a ‘sector-based’ approach for the industry that may help speed up climate action by business. Under this approach, an industry sector, rather than a country or single facility, might be given an emissions or efficiency performance target on a global scale. Reaching these performance targets could be driven by inter-facility, and/or inter-company negotiations and agreements to identify the most efficient solution.

Other emissions

The CSI looks beyond CO2 for new and efficient ways to reduce industry emissions of such things as nitrogen oxides (NOx), sulfur compounds (SOx), dust, particulates and persistent organic pollutants (POPs).

Member companies undertake projects in common, such as an emissions monitoring and reporting protocol for NOx, SOx and particulates, as well as guidelines for the use of fuels and raw materials. Individual companies have been applying these guidelines since July 2006. SINTEF issued the second edition of the report Formation and release of POPs in the cement industry in January 2006.

The CSI continues to work with the Stockholm Convention Secretariat on emission control strategies for POPs from cement kilns, including dioxin, furan, and other micro-pollutant emissions control strategies.

New fuels and raw materials

Cement kilns can be used for energy recovery from non-hazardous wastes, such as tyres and biomass, as well as some hazardous wastes, but doing this raises many contentious issues, including emissions issues. Some members of the CSI are working with governments and other organisations to provide practical guidance for using waste and other fuels and materials in cement kilns.

The Initiative has developed a set of guidelines laying out a consistent approach to the selection and use of fuels and raw materials that each CSI company was to apply in its operations by 2006. These are built upon the principles of sustainable development, eco-efficiency, and industrial ecology, and integrated into local resource management infrastructures. The CSI has promoted this approach and the associated practices needed to implement it throughout the industry. These guidelines also deal with the occupational health and safety concerns of handling these materials.

The new reporting guidelines are based on consultations with stakeholders such as WWF, UK environmental regulators, and others.

WBCSD has worked closely with The Natural Step International and GTZ (German Society for Technical Cooperation), and used feedback from all these processes in formulating and fine-tuning its guidelines. The CSI guidelines were turned from draft into final in July 2006 and applied thereafter by individual companies.

The future

The CSI is set to release an assessment of its first five years of work, CSI Progress Report 2007, describing the group’s achievements to date and laying out a roadmap to the future, detailing priorities and work streams and new commitments.

The CSI wants to work with others to find ways to be more eco-efficient, accomplishing ever more with ever fewer resources, less waste and less pollution. The industry has a responsibility to understand and promote sustainable development.

This article is reproduced with permission from the May edition of World Cement.

Author Howard Klee Publication Date 3 Sep 2007 Document Type WBCSD in the news WBCSD news Issue/Topic Cement Energy & Climate Source World Cement Include In RSS WBCSD News & Updates		157 kb