American Cement and Concrete Industry Releases Carbon Neutrality Road Map

Marina Maletic | 2021-11-08 | Category : Environmental Policies | 2 minutes read | 2323 Views

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The Portland Cement Association (PCA) issued a PCA Roadmap to Carbon Neutrality. This is a way for them to deal with all the CO2 cement production creates.

According to Treehugger, this roadmap includes plans for the entire production chain. It starts at the cement plants and then goes through the entire lifecycle of the built environment.

"The fact that even if the industry were to eliminate all combustion emissions, the chemical process used to manufacture clinker creates a separate stream of CO2 emissions. For example, in the U.S., 60% of the CO2 generated by cement plants is from a chemical reaction called calcination. Calcination is the chemical fact of life in that it is the first step in a required series of complex chemical and physical changes to make cement. The chemical fact of life is also called“process emissions."

They hope to reach carbon neutrality by 2050.

PCA says 1.25% of all the US CO2 emissions come from concrete production, but some claim that number is much higher.

Worldwide, cement production accounts for 8% of total CO2 emissions, most of which comes from China.

PCA also acknowledges that currently, there doesn’t exist a single process nor technology that can make the cement and concrete industry carbon neutral. However, they plan to attack the production at all stages — through the whole value chain.

Let’s hope they’ll be successful.

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Marina Maletic

Marina is passionate about sustainability and works to help ensure our planet stays as our home for a long time. She takes part in environmental conservation by recycling and not buying single-use plastic. When not writing, she can be found with her nose stuck in a book or trying out new baking recipes.