Concrete is arguably one of the most important substances on earth.

It is critical for putting roofs over the heads of billions, and essential for providing structure for healthcare, sanitation, transport, education, and  workplaces. Additionally, it is vital in providing the infrastructure required to meet  carbon reduction targets all around the world.

Cement is the key ingredient of concrete. It is the “glue” – otherwise known as the “binder”.

If you don’t have cement, concrete will collapse – just like a sandcastle.

Even though cement only makes up about 10 per cent by weight of concrete, it is responsible for over 90 per cent of its carbon footprint.

The cement industry produces a huge amount of CO2. After energy and steel production, it is the third single largest emitter – it produces more CO2 than the shipping, aviation, and trucking industries combined.

And the size of the industry is only increasing. As urbanisation and population growth continues, a New York City-sized city will be built every month for the next 40 years.

Cement CO2 emissions are down 15 per cent based on 1990 levels.

However, near-term emissions reduction levers are almost exhausted, and further reductions of only about one per cent per year from 2017 to 2030 are projected.

The cement industry’s CO2 emissions emanate from two key sources.

Firstly, cement manufacturing is very energy intensive. Energy emissions account for about 33 per cent of the cement industry’s CO2 footprint.

This means that we could manufacture cement using entirely renewable energy sources and still only reduce the carbon footprint of the cement industry by 33 per cent.

Sixty-six per cent of CO2 emissions from the manufacturing process of traditional cement result from a chemical reaction that occurs when you heat limestone to 1,450°C. These emissions are unavoidable in the production of traditional cement.

The industry is, therefore, left with two choices:

Option one, capture and use the CO2 emissions using carbon capture utilisation and storage (CCUS) technology. While exciting, CCUS will likely not be feasible at scale for at least a decade, and will be economically difficult to deploy across the cement industry.

For more than 20 years, Ecocem has been reducing the need to burn limestone for cement, by allowing the use of alternative ingredients.

Our products, which have historically principally utilised ground granulated blastfurnace slag (GGBS), emit just a fraction of CO2 per tonne, compared to traditional cement.

Established in 2000, Ecocem operates four production plants and three import terminals across Europe with a total capacity of 2.4 million tonnes of GGBS.  With approximately 200 employees, we supply more than 10 countries with 15 different low carbon cementitious products.

Our mission is to lead the way with low carbon cement technology, and we place a high value on our own internal sustainability performance. We monitor and measure our operational carbon emissions, identify reduction initiatives, and publish a detailed sustainability report annually.

Ecocem is constantly optimising the environmental, technical, and economic performance of our technology and products.

The biggest obstacle to the rapid decarbonisation of the cement industry has been scalability – GGBS, the product that we have used historically to produce our low carbon solutions, is a relatively scarce resource.

Partially or wholly substituting traditional cement with scalable cementitious alternatives is undoubtedly the most cost-efficient way of decarbonising the cement industry. This is because it can be done using existing facilities and by using raw materials already widely used across the industry today.

The green premium of our breakthrough scalable technology is a fraction of that of other decarbonisation technologies.

First and foremost, we are innovators. We challenge ourselves to invent breakthrough technologies and, to do so, we work with some of the world’s best materials focused universities, such as Université Paris-Saclay, to help us realise our mission.

From Bill Gates led Breakthrough Energy Ventures (BEV), to ArcelorMittal, the world’s leading steel company, and Saint-Gobain Group, a global sustainable materials group, our strategic investors help guide our growth ambitions.

The cement and construction industries are developing and deploying a range of emission reduction technologies. At Ecocem, we aim to be the vanguard of these efforts.

Our wide range of products including low carbon cements, screeds, and mortars have led the way for the past two decades.

However, we have only been able to move as fast as the supply of our key raw materials.