Cementing The Road To Climate Change
The booming production and use of cement is the single largest material contributor to climate change.
"In booming economies from Asia to Eastern Europe, cement is the glue of progress. The material that binds the ingredients of concrete together, cement is essential for constructing buildings and laying roads in much of the world."
"Some 80 percent of cement is made in and used by emerging economies; China alone makes and uses 45 percent of global output. Production is doubling every four years in places like Ukraine."
"But making cement creates pollution, in the form of carbon dioxide emissions, and the greenest of technologies can reduce that by only 20 percent."
"Cement plants already account for 5 percent of global emissions of carbon dioxide, the main cause of global warming."
"Compounding the problem, cement has no viable recycling potential, as the abandoned buildings that line roads from Tunisia to Mongolia demonstrate. Each new road, each new building, needs new cement."
"Worse yet, green incentives may be allowing the industry to pollute even more. The European Union subsidizes Western companies that buy outmoded cement plants in poor countries and refit them with green technology."
"The emissions per ton of cement produced do go down. But the amount of cement produced often goes way up, as does the pollution generated."
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A bit misleading...
The article is a bit misleading in that it says that you can't recycle cement. This is technically true (you can't extract and recycle the powder), but it is entirely possible to recycle concrete, turning it into riprap, roadbase, or aggregate for new concrete. Furthermore, properly designed and constructed portland cement concrete structures have a very long lifespan, and there is no viable replacement material available for many concrete applications.
Environmental concerns about CO2 cement plant emissions need to be looked at holistically. For example, tightening CO2 restrictions and cement production in the United States merely has the effect of pushing more cement production to places like Turkey and Indonesia, with the resulting cement then shipped back to the United States, adding CO2 emissions from shipping as well.
Yes, converting plants from wet process to dry process is a good idea and will reduce emissions somewhat. However, there's no getting around the fact that making cement consists of crushing and cooking rocks at extraordinarily high temperatures (1,400 C), with CO2 released from the rock during the process. For more information on cement production, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portland_cement
Greg Redeker