Is Cleaner Cement Possible?
Date Posted: August 4, 2015
Posted In: Ideas,
From Journal of Commerce: World cement production is growing more rapidly than we thought it would just a few years ago. In 2012, researchers at Columbia University told us they expected production to reach between 3.7 billion and 4.4 billion tonnes by 2010. But with the figures for 2014 now available, we find that world production already totalled 4.3 billion tonnes.
Asian nations are leading the way. China produced more than half the global total in 2014. India produced seven per cent, and the rest of Asia, including Japan, produced almost 17 per cent.
These numbers are important because of the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) produced. The cement industry alone accounts for about five per cent of global CO2 emissions, a fact that the cement/concrete industry has long known. The construction industry it serves knows it too.
As population growth continues, the world continues to warm. A useful rule of thumb to remember is that the production of a tonne of cement produces a tonne of CO2.
That’s the rule that is stimulating a lot of research into ways of reducing emissions, and/or find ways to capture and sequester CO2.