For higher or worse, concrete is in all places. Because the second-most consumed materials on the earth, it is within the roads you drive on, the muse of your house and, oftentimes, the partitions of the workplace constructing that surrounds you.
The issue is, making concrete additionally pumps carbon dioxide into the ambiance. Cement, a key ingredient in concrete, is the world’s second-largest industrial CO2 emitter and is answerable for about seven per cent of carbon emissions globally and 1.4 per cent of Canada’s.
However reducing down on these emissions is tough to do. A lot of the carbon generated by way of cement making comes from the elemental strategy of heating floor limestone (calcium carbonate), clay and sand at extraordinarily excessive temperatures in a kiln till it varieties small nodules referred to as clinker, which is then floor into cement.
“Since Roman instances, that is the way it’s been completed,” stated Corwyn Bruce, a challenge director with Heidelberg Supplies, a German multinational firm that makes cement, mixture and different constructing supplies.
“The carbon is inherent,” stated Bruce, who heads up Heidelberg’s Edmonton-based carbon seize and storage challenge. “It is actually a part of the chemistry.”
Enter carbon seize and storage (CCS).
The expertise, which has currently generated a number of buzz inside the oilpatch, can also be more and more being seen as a treatment for so-called “hard-to-abate” industries — like cement, iron and metal manufacturing — the place a lot of the carbon dioxide emissions are created by way of course of reactions and cannot be eradicated by switching to renewable fuels.
Energy crops and fertilizer crops are amongst different sectors additionally turning to the expertise.
Whereas CCS expertise has its limitations — specifically, the geology of the place initiatives are situated — the variety of CCS initiatives is on the rise as firms search for methods to decarbonize the place no different simple choice is obtainable.
Initiatives underway
At Heidelberg and Lafarge — two of the world’s main cement producers — work is nicely underway to marry cement manufacturing with carbon seize expertise.
Heidelberg has 9 carbon seize and storage initiatives deliberate throughout North America, Europe and the U.Okay. The primary two anticipated to come back on-line are in Edmonton and Brevik, Norway.
The Brevik plant is predicted to seize about 400,000 tonnes of CO2 per 12 months, about 50 per cent of the plant’s emissions, whereas the corporate’s Edmonton plant is predicted to seize 95 per cent.
That is largely due to the geology of every location. In Brevik, carbon must be refrigerated, liquified, placed on a ship and sailed round a fjord to be saved underneath the North Sea.
In Alberta, in contrast, “all now we have to do is put it right into a pipeline and ship it to a storage area,” stated Bruce.
Lafarge, for its half, has carbon seize initiatives underway at each of its cement crops in Western Canada. A detailed feasibility examine is underway at its plant in Exshaw, Alta., and it has a carbon seize demonstration challenge at its plant in Richmond, B.C.
Right here once more, geology makes a distinction.
The Exshaw plant is predicted to seize a million tonnes of CO2 per 12 months and sequester it inside the Bow Valley, whereas the Richmond plant is planning to reuse its captured carbon for different functions.
“The sequestration of CO2 in Southern B.C. is much less identified and extra work must be completed earlier than we will transfer ahead with it,” stated Stephanie Voysey, Lafarge’s head of sustainability and setting for Western Canada.
In Could, the corporate introduced a brand new section of its B.C. demonstration that can see captured carbon used to make artificial hydrocarbons, that are in flip used for plastics, lubricants and cosmetics.
Exterior the cement business, the Canadian metal sector can also be taking a look at carbon seize as an choice to assist decarbonize its operations.
That business, nevertheless, is basically concentrated in Ontario, which has solely just lately opened the door to permitting carbon seize and storage, and there’s nonetheless some uncertainty about the place that carbon can be saved.
“It is not only a query for the metal sector, however the bigger manufacturing sector … ‘The place is the sequestration?'” stated Chad Cathcart, director of analysis for Hamilton-based Stelco, talking on a panel at a carbon seize convention in Edmonton this week.
Renewable fuels, lowering clinker
Except for location, there are different components that may make or break a carbon seize challenge.
Even in prime-geology Alberta, CCS initiatives could be costly, take a very long time to construct and could be hindered by components like labour availability, financing and authorities coverage.
The concrete and cement business subsequently is not counting on carbon seize alone to satisfy its net-zero targets.
In keeping with the Cement Affiliation of Canada, firms are additionally eliminating the usage of coal and coke as warmth sources, ramping up the usage of various fuels and lowering the usage of clinker.
Nonetheless, the affiliation famous that regardless of the constraints, CCS stays the one expertise that may eradicate the sector’s course of emissions.
“We do not get to zero with out it,” the affiliation wrote in its net-zero motion plan.
“Along with bioenergy, clear fuels, and carbon uptake, [carbon capture] might end result sooner or later supply of carbon-negative concrete for our world.”
Stephanie Voysey, Lafarge’s head of sustainability and setting for Western Canada, agrees.
Given how ubiquitous cement is, she famous, it is essential to determine a solution to decarbonize it — and one of the best ways to try this, at this level, seems to be CCS.
“We’re not going to cease utilizing cement, we’re not going to cease utilizing concrete,” she stated. “That is the subsequent step in our innovation with a purpose to attain internet zero.”
