![]() ![]() ![]() The result, according to the company, is a product that’s 60% less emissions intensive and can be blended with ordinary Portland cement as a supplementary cementitious material at a ratio of roughly 20%. Fortera will capture CO2 normally emitted as exhaust from cement manufacturing at the plant and feed it back into the kiln, reducing CO2 loss and thus significantly improving the efficiency with which raw limestone is turned into cement. One example of carbon utilization is the technology currently being pioneered by Fortera at a cement plant in Redding, California. Pioneering companies are already showing these new practices work at commercial scale. Importantly, the pretreatment required to separate CO2 from the flue gas of cement plants also reduces harmful local air pollutants like particulate matter and sulfur dioxide. This includes, but is not limited to, technologies that enable capture and utilization of CO2 directly at cement manufacturing facilities carbon mineralization methods in which CO2 is captured and injected into fresh concrete where it becomes permanently embedded and actually helps improve its strength and carbon storage in which CO2 is captured and stored securely in long-term geologic reservoirs (and not used for enhanced oil recovery). ![]() While CCUS is the commonly used catch-all term, it represents a diverse set of technologies and uses and its application in the cement and concrete sectors can take several unique forms. “At scale, these solutions can one day lead to carbon negative concrete, the point at which more emissions are captured and stored in the material than are generated in its production and use.”ĭeveloping and deploying these technologies for the cement and concrete sectors thus offers the prospect of commercializing a game-changing climate solution, akin to the innovation breakthrough represented by electric vehicles in the transportation sector or heat pumps in home heating. New and emerging technologies that can capture, utilize and store CO2 across multiple manufacturing phases and components of cement and concrete can permanently lock away heat-trapping emissions in the future. However, as detailed in a recent report by Carbon 180, concrete’s long-term climate relevance is not limited to emissions reduction: this ubiquitous material could one day serve as a global carbon sink. Instead, it's a way of addressing the largest share of emissions that cannot otherwise be abated for a material we rely on. Importantly, carbon capture in cement is not a way to prolong dirty fossil fuels that can be replaced. As a result, full decarbonization of cement will require deploying advanced technologies, such as carbon capture utilization and storage (CCUS), alongside other near-term solutions like improving plant efficiency, fuel switching, and substituting low-carbon alternatives for traditional cement in ready mix concrete. Most emissions from traditional cement production result from chemical reactions in the manufacturing process, not fuel combustion. Taken together, this makes it imperative that we support innovation that allows them to adapt to a carbon free future. These industries are also important employers in the United States and a strategically vital part of the American manufacturing base. But unlike the internal combustion engine, materials like cement and steel have no readily available replacement and will continue to form the basis of our towns and cities for the next decades-the timeframe most critical to climate action. Like power and transportation, decarbonizing the cement industry, alongside other industrial sub-sectors like steel, is critical to achieving a net-zero emissions economy. Portland cement, concrete's common binding agent, makes up just 10-15% of the material's mass but accounts for 80-90% of its emissions. Together, the scale at which it is used in the modern world and how emissions intensive it is to produce make cement a top source of climate pollution, responsible for about one-quarter of all industrial emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and roughly 7-8% of global CO2 emissions. Concrete is the most widely consumed manmade material on Earth, used across our built environment in buildings, roads, bridges and more. ![]()
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