Concrete: the quiet emitter.
In the UK The Guardian has a story The unheralded polluter: cement industry comes clean on its impact, talking about a recent EU summit of concrete producers. Chief Executives and other senior concrete industry leaders met recently in Brussels to discuss the impact of their industry on climate change.
No company will make carbon-neutral cement any time soon. The manufacturing process depends on burning vast amounts of cheap coal to heat kilns to more than 1,500°C. It also relies on the decomposition of limestone, a chemical change which frees carbon dioxide as a byproduct. So as demand for cement grows, for sewers, schools and hospitals as well as for luxury hotels and car parks, so will greenhouse gas emissions. Cement plants and factories across the world are projected to churn out almost 5bn tonnes of carbon dioxide annually by 2050 – 20 times as much as the government has pledged the entire UK will produce by that time.
Dimitri Papalexopoulos, managing director of Titan Cement, Athens, who attended the meeting, said: “No matter what you do, cement production will always release carbon dioxide. You can’t change the chemistry, so we can’t achieve spectacular cuts in emissions.
“Cement is needed to satisfy basic human needs, and there is no obvious substitute, so there is a trade-off between development and sustainability.”
Surely the creative challenge here is to try to change the chemistry of concrete. If concrete itself is the problem, and it seems to be, then making cleaner, better concrete has to be the answer. I simply don’t accept glib statements from the concrete makers that the chemistry can’t be fixed. — DS
Technorati Tags: business, carbon neutral, climate change, concrete, global warming, UN
October 15th, 2007 at 9:39 AM
Very interesting Dave. How long before we read about “clean concrete” – just like “clean coal”?