Fabio Cyril, Sustainability Coordinator at Votorantim Cimentos
Now look around you and realize how cement is part of your life. It is on the walls of schools, homes and hospitals. On bridges, buildings, ports and highways. In the countryside and in cities. Everywhere. Cement is synonymous with resistance, durability, comfort, quality of life and development. But, like anything produced by man, it has its impacts.
The global greenhouse gas emissions from the cement industry account for approximately 7% of all CO2 emitted on the planet. In Brazil, this figure is much lower, around 2.6%, due to a series of sustainability actions implemented by the industry over the last few years. We are committed to reducing emissions and we know how to get there. Under the guidance of Cement Technology Roadmap, we present different short, medium and long-term alternatives for the decarbonization of the sector.
Adding up all the initiatives, the cement industry will be able to mitigate emissions by around 35% by 2050 and thus contribute significantly to efforts to keep global warming under control and to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement. As leaders in the national market and one of the largest players in the world, we at Votorantim Cimentos are increasingly seeking sustainable solutions. And this has been the case for some time now.
Our goal is to reduce the CO2 emitted in cement manufacturing by 25% by 2020, compared to the 1990 baseline year. In 2018, in Brazil, we achieved a CO2 emission reduction rate of 18.6%. Another important achievement was the unprecedented recognition of our leadership and transparency in Climate Change management in the 2018 CDP (Carbon Disclosure Project) reporting cycle. We were the best-rated cement industry in Brazil in the Climate category, also making up the group of the three best in the world.
The cost of generating CO2
The issue of CO2 emissions is extremely strategic for Votorantim Cimentos. We currently work with an internal CO2 price to make our investments more attractive. In Brazil, the cost of a ton of CO2 has not yet been officially defined, but we consider this factor in our planning. This consideration needs to be taken into account to ensure that our investments remain competitive in a future scenario in which CO2 emissions may eventually represent a new cost.
Today, we see the opportunity to replace clinker, the main raw material for cement, with alternative sources of supply. Our goal is to replace clinker by up to 50% by 2050. Even so, we will need to make much more progress, with a focus on the Paris Agreement.
Co-processing, the replacement of petroleum coke with alternative fuels, is a technology that has proven to be a great alternative for reducing our carbon footprint. Therefore, it is worth detailing a little about the environmental benefits of this solution, widely used in Europe and pioneered in Brazil by Votorantim Cimentos. In fact, it offers not only environmental benefits, but also economic and social advantages. Almost 30 years ago, we began co-processing unusable tires in a factory in Paraná. The material stopped being an environmental liability and assumed a noble position. Instead of going to landfills, dumps or being exposed as a shelter for dengue mosquito larvae, it began to be used as fuel in our furnaces, turning into energy and helping to reduce the demand for fossil fuels. There is not even ash left, simply because it is incorporated into the cement with zero compromise on the final quality of the product.
Evolution in alternative fuels
Currently, 14 Votorantim Cimentos factories are co-processing or have a license to operate with alternative fuels. In addition to tires and other industrial waste, we also use different types of biomass, such as rice husks, wood chips, babassu coconut, sawdust and açaí seeds. In this chain of shared value generation, we involve babassu and açaí producers from communities close to the factories, positively impacting local development and contributing to increasing family income.
Last year, we also took a major step forward in our CDR (Fuel Derived from Waste) project, initiating a program that is unprecedented in the national cement industry: the post-recycling co-processing of part of the waste collected in the cities of Piracicaba and Sorocaba in the state of São Paulo. In total, 854,000 tons of waste and biomass were co-processed throughout 2018, which means a reduction of 521,000 tons of CO2 emissions, avoiding the import and consumption of 195,000 tons of petroleum coke.
And so we are getting closer to the goal of reducing CO2 emissions in cement manufacturing by 25% by 2020. We certainly know that we need to make more progress. With an eye on building a more sustainable future, several initiatives for carbon capture and sequestration are underway at the company. One of them is being carried out at St. Marys Cement, our factory in Canada. It is an algae biorefinery that uses a 25,000-liter photobioreactor to recycle CO2 and other industrial emissions through photosynthesis. Emissions from the factory's furnace chimneys are channeled to the photobioreactor, where fast-growing algae consume the gases, absorbing approximately two tons of CO2 for each ton of biomass they produce. This biomass can be used as a raw material for the production of animal feed and fertilizers or as a source of energy for industrial furnaces.
The green economy and low-carbon industry are the future. We at Votorantim Cimentos have invested and made every effort to be prepared for this new reality as quickly as possible.
