5 Years On
Introduction
Europe has an ambitious vision, a vision of a carbon neutral future, a vision that integrates energy intensive industries as well as the construction sector and its entire value chain. Cement, which binds concrete together, is at the heart of solutions to turn this vision into reality. These solutions span over the entire life cycle of the cement and concrete value chain: from raw materials to production, use, re-use, and recycling. As part of our effort to move towards a carbon neutral construction sector, we have taken stock of our progress since the publication of our 2050 Low Carbon Roadmap in 2013 and mapped routes to a resource efficient and carbon neutral built environment.
Strong Foundations
Over the past decades, continuous improvements in Europe have seen the energy used in cement manufacturing reduced by about 30%. Five years ago, the European cement industry published its Low Carbon Roadmap outlining how we can reduce CO2 emissions intensity by 32% (compared to 1990 levels) by 2050 with conventional technologies and potentially by 80% if breakthrough technologies become widely available. We evaluated where we are on our journey to 2050 and wanted to explore additional avenues to accelerate our progress and the transition towards our objectives.
Report our progress to date
Identify where we are, compared to the targets set in our 2013 Roadmap; what reductions we have achieved, which technologies have helped us getting there and, more importantly, how we will meet our future targets.
Assess our roadmap against science based targets
The roadmap pre-dates the Paris Agreement. We, therefore, initiated the process of having it assessed using several Science Based Target (SBT) methodologies, thus ensuring compatibility with the objectives of the Paris Agreement, the 2°C Scenario.
Include the complete value chain
The European Union is defining its long-term vision for a modern and low carbon European economy. It aims at leveraging opportunities brought about by the low carbon transition, including exploiting synergies across strategic value chains. Given its global impact and significant potential to contribute to reaching the objectives of the 2°C Scenario, the global construction value chain is a major driver of the low carbon transition. Carbon neutrality in the built environment requires a collaborative approach across the construction value chain, looking beyond individual sectors and subsectors and focusing on how lifecycle performance can be implemented broadly so as to accelerate results. The cement industry is uniquely placed to achieve step-changes in the way we build, use innovative and low carbon solutions, and integrate a circular model into construction practices, whilst building durable buildings and infrastructure.