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In this episode of the World Cement Podcast, we are joined by Antonio Carrillo, Vice President for Sustainability at Holcim. Tune in to hear a discussion covering everything from CCUS to the circular economy.
Topics covered include:
Topics covered include:
- Key decarbonisation milestones
- CCUS projects
- The circular economy
- Green construction
- Collaboration
- Policy & Legislation
- And more!
Creators and Guests
What is World Cement Podcast?
The World Cement podcast: a podcast series for professionals in the cement industry.
Hello everyone and welcome back to another wonderful episode of the World Cement Podcast with me, your host, David Bisley, Senior Editor of World Cement. In this episode, I'm joined by Antonio Carrillo, Vice President of Sustainability at Holcim, and we're going to be exploring Holcim's sustainability and decarbonization efforts, covering everything from carbon capture through to circular construction. I just wanted to take a moment to remind you to register for WorldCement. It's free of charge and gives you access to the latest issues of WorldCement, both in print and online. Every issue comes packed full of regional analysis, technical articles, project case studies, and the latest industry news.
David Bizley:Simply head over to worldcement.com, click the magazine tab and register today. It's as simple as that. Happy reading. Antonio, welcome to the World Cement podcast. Glad to have you with us.
Antonio Carrillo:Thanks for having me on the podcast, David. It's great to be here.
David Bizley:Excellent. So, Holcim's approach to sustainability covers a number of areas like climate, circularity, working around nature. And taking climate first, What are the key milestones that you're hoping to achieve over the next decade?
Antonio Carrillo:So indeed, Holcim has recently launched its next gen growth 2030 strategy. And it is not surprised that not only climate, but the whole sustainability remains being a strategic pillar of the strategy. And one clear message I'd like to pass is that this is not only the right thing to do for the people on the planet, but it's also a driver of profitable growth. And our strategy is sound. Let me tackle climate among the other topics, but by 2030 we aim to achieve industry leading sustainability targets.
Antonio Carrillo:First one is we are scaling our sustainable offering to meet the customer demands. We want to reach about 50% of the net sales from Ecoplanet and Ecopact, which are our low carbon cements and concrete respectively by 02/1930. Also with regards to sequelae construction, we will increase our construction demolition materials volumes to 20,000,000 tons by using our Ecocycle technology platform. And on climate as per your question and building on the foundation of having been as hosted first industry in the first in the industry setting SBTI targets aligned with the 1.5. We aim to reduce our net emissions below 400 kilos per ton of cement tissues by 02/1930.
Antonio Carrillo:This is equivalent to a 30% reduction versus 2020. As you briefly tackle also to build a nature positive future, we are aiming to reduce our freshwater withdrawal by 33% versus 2020.
David Bizley:Okay, excellent. And looking at some of the technologies involved across the board, carbon capture is expected to do a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to meeting climate targets in cement. How are Holson's carbon capture projects progressing?
Antonio Carrillo:Carbon capture is going to help us get there for sure, but it's one of our main three drivers. The first one is low carbon formulation. Here we prefer into the traditional leavers. We aim to reduce our clinker factor from 70% in 2024 to 65% in 02/1930. And this reduction together with the use of alternative raw materials will help us to bring down our CO2 between twenty five and thirty five kilos by 2030 in that given period.
Antonio Carrillo:And this is also going to help us bring significant cost savings per ton of the cement produced. So we'll keep on working on formulation. Second is energy. The good old alternative fuels. We aim to increase our alternative fuels use from 35% today or twenty twenty four to 50% in 02/1930.
Antonio Carrillo:And these 15 percentage points of increase will also help us to reduce you to between twenty five and thirty five kilos and additional significant savings in that given period. And then again, to your question, we have CCUS among all the innovative technologies, but in CCUS we are now having, I guess, the broadest range of projects in execution with seven of those projects already awarded by the European Innovation Funds. We're referring to projects in Poland, in Germany, in France, Croatia, Greece, and Belgium. And the idea is to keep on working on those in the next few years. We have a clear target to provide the market 8,000,000 tonnes of near zero cement by 02/1930.
Antonio Carrillo:This is the result of having capture by the idea of 5,000,000 tonnes of CO2. And this is going to help us to also increase NetSales from sustainable offerings through price premiums and obviously this rise in demand of near sea cements that we see in the market.
David Bizley:Okay. Another aspect of sort of Wholesome's approach to sustainability is circularity or the circular economy. Can you give me some examples of circular economy initiatives that you've been involved in?
Antonio Carrillo:Circularity or circular construction as we want to refer now, I think it's a fundamental strategic aspect of Holsteum and I guess a key priority for the industry. Many facts, population growth, urbanization, and obviously existing limits on natural resources. So, so these secular solutions are going to be essential. We always put these equivalence in context. A city of Madrid is built every week in the world.
Antonio Carrillo:And of course we need to bring circularity to the picture. And there is also the fact that I mentioned before is not only the right thing to do for those reasons I just explained, but there is also a growing market demand for circular solution. We aim to be at the forefront of driving circularity at scale. In 2024, we've recycled 6,500,000 tonnes of construction demolition materials. This is equivalent to more than a thousand tracks loads per day.
Antonio Carrillo:And now in this new strategy, as mentioned before, David, the ambition is to reach over 20,000,000 tonnes of recycled CDM, construction emission material, by 02/1930. For this, we have a clear target also of expanding portfolio of recycling platforms, two fifty plus by 02/1930. We're going to do that through organic growth, but also acquisitions. Today we have already 98 plants in Europe. And the idea is really to use these construction demolition material in a number of forms.
Antonio Carrillo:We can use the fines to incorporate it into the cement formulations. We, of course, we can recycle concrete into recycle aggregates and bring this into the ready mix formulation. We have for this our label of eco cycle, and then we bring solutions to the market that range between 10 and a 100% of construction and emission materials inside to bring these singularity products into the market.
David Bizley:Now previously cement producers have faced some challenges with demand when it came to greener cement products. Have you seen that market grow over recent years? And what are you doing at Wholesym to promote the uptake of greener construction products?
Antonio Carrillo:We've definitely seen this this customer demand growing for sustainable offering. This is actually the reason why, why we see the increase on Ecopact and Ecoplanet's share of sales in the respective categories. To new highs in Q1 twenty twenty five, 29% respectively. So definitely the demand is there. What is the driving factor of this?
Antonio Carrillo:We see two main aspects. One is the enhanced building norms and regulation that are actually moving the needle in jurisdictions. Also see customers that are more advanced in the journey of decarbonizing their companies, and they basically seek for a clear low carbon products to support the reduction of the scope three emissions. It is happening in Europe. It's in Europe is probably clear.
Antonio Carrillo:We see a strong demand for our sustainable offering that has consistently been driving profitable growth. And we do expect this to continue in the years to come. But it's probably the positive note as well is that we see this uptake as being accelerated in other parts of the world, mainly in Asia, Middle East, Africa, and the recent quarter. The future looks bright for sustainable offering. And on top of that, there is a lot of new aspects in the regulatory landscape and all framework landscape, such as low carbon ratings initiative that has been launched by the Global Cement and Concrete Association to standardize the concept of low carbon cements and concrete.
Antonio Carrillo:So we see these as taking more and more traction.
David Bizley:Now, wholesome also places a focus on supporting nature. So can you tell me a bit about your strategy for nature and what are the key areas that you're focusing on?
Antonio Carrillo:Yeah, look, nature, we want to refer to nature as the new climate. We see a lot of signs of everything that happened in the framework and the climate frameworks are being replicated now in nature. I mean, it is not a surprise. Nature is the foundation of our business in life and, and of course it's a moral obligation, also bringing the economics more than half of the global GDP depends on nature. So it is no brainer.
Antonio Carrillo:It's actually part of the strategy of Holcim. Three main pillars within this one, we work on water and biodiversity, and more recently on bringing nature based solutions to, to the cities. We're referring to green roofs and all the solutions that basically help to bring nature into the built environment. In, in, in water, we have this clear target of reducing our freshwater withdrawal by 33% by 2030 versus a 2020 as a baseline. With credible organisations to validate this ambition, Holsim was recently named by the Science Based Target Network, the SBTN, as one of the very first three companies globally to adopt science based targets for nature.
Antonio Carrillo:We announced that at the COP sixteen convention back in Cali and, and we keep on working on, on fresh water. This is also an aspect that we have linked to the compensation of our senior leaders. In biodiversity, we have a very comprehensive approach. Here we aim to achieve a measurable positive impact on biodiversity across our quarries. And I guess the first question when you go into these statement is how do you measure that?
Antonio Carrillo:And that is why the first thing we did already back in the days was to partner with another credible organization, IUCN, to develop what we call BIERS is the biodiversity indicator reporting system. This is a tool that allow us to basically measure the baseline of biodiversity in every individual quarry. Then through a number of actions and interventions, can measure how this indicator is evolving, increasing. And that is basically our approach to obviously have a positive impact on biodiversity across the poorest. And lastly, and the most recent is the green groups.
Antonio Carrillo:So a range of companies and brands in our portfolio like Cinco that bring these kind of ring groups and nature rated solutions to the market. And that's a new frontier to really make it also part of the sustainability offering to our customers.
David Bizley:Okay. Excellent. Decarbonisation and creating a sustainable cement industry are sort of enormous, almost generational challenges. And we've touched on this a little bit in your previous answer just now actually, but how does Wholesome view the role of collaboration and partnership in terms of being able to overcome these challenges?
Antonio Carrillo:Fundamental. I think collaboration is a fundamental part of this to make it happen. We like to say that partnership is a new leadership, but this is more than a tagline, it's a reality. When it comes to decarbonizing the build environment and the adoption at a scale of all these sustainable offering we just mentioned, the only way to do it is to partner across the value chain from architects to developers, to contractors and owners to drive this change. So there are innovations in place that, that have a lot of potential for a higher uptake.
Antonio Carrillo:And in order to accelerate this adoption, we need to work on those, on those engagements. Not only on the value chain, there's also a lot of work to do in the advocacy and the adoption of norms, but collaboration fundamental. What do we do at Holsing? Well, there's a range of practices. I like to probably start with the Holcim Foundation for sustainable construction.
Antonio Carrillo:This is a foundation that Holcim put in place a couple of decades ago and help us to bring these relationships in motion and to help this strategic leadership in, in, in driving implementation. But also if you just focus a little bit more within our operations, collaboration is also key to accelerate innovation.
David Bizley:Sure.
Antonio Carrillo:We, when it comes to clean technologies, we discuss about carbon capture implementation requires collaboration within the ecosystem of this technology from, from the companies that are going to to use a CO2, if you're referring to utilization to the transportation means to bring that up, etcetera, etcetera. And also when it comes to, to all the clean technologies, we have a wide range of decarbonization technologies that are also centered around our open innovation ecosystem. And for these we use, we have a brand called Make Adventures, also Make Adventures, through which we assess more than 500 startups annually. With this corporate venture capital unit, we aim to scale these groundbreaking technologies in the build environment, and then also to collaborate with those startups to, to, to bring that change at scale.
David Bizley:Excellent. Now turning to policy and legislation, which I think in one of your answers earlier, you touched on a little bit. Obviously, wholesale operates around the world in varying jurisdictions, but in general terms, what are the kinds of policies or legislation that you think the most beneficial to supporting the transition to net zero for cement? And are there any examples of successful policies, things that you think have worked really well that you'd like to see replicated elsewhere perhaps?
Antonio Carrillo:This is, David, a crucial item as mentioned before. I think we have two sets of these and at Holstein we are actively addressing both global and local specific policies as well through close collaboration with policymakers, partners as in key stakeholders, but also with the value chain. I think if you want me to highlight probably Europe has currently the most advanced decaponisation policies and regulations that facilitate this change. I'm obviously referring to the EUTS to the European Union emissions trading scheme, which has probably been the first major carbon market that helped incentivizing these investments into lower emissions. That in itself is now evolving with the implementation of the CBAM.
Antonio Carrillo:This is carbon border adjustment mechanism. So there's going to be the next step of this policy. But as undoubtedly brought change and helped decarbonize industry in Europe big time. But then you have also other incentives like the Innovation Fund, the European Innovation Fund. We did refer about it when we were discussing and the CCUS, it's been fundamental, the support to really scale up the number of projects in execution.
Antonio Carrillo:And this is probably the main reference that we see at a regional scale. We see EU ETS being somehow replicated in other jurisdictions, countries. Mexico is adopting a very similar approach and we expect this to probably be a reference for LATAM in the future. And, but I, but I would also like to bring local changes, local norms that have basically been very effective in bringing chain. We were referring before on circular construction to eco cycle.
Antonio Carrillo:And the origin of this was a very local tonal norm in Zurich, in the city of Zurich that was requiring companies that aim to participate in public procurement to have a minimum content of recycled waste or materials. And that's a little bit how the previous sort of eco cycle, which we call SUSTENO started to be in motion. We tunnel norm, building norm pose a challenge. We took it, we developed this product, and after years of advocacy, proactive advocacy is now in operation in many countries. So also small changes can be very effective without the need of big schemes.
David Bizley:Excellent. Now, thinking ahead to all of the new products and technologies coming online over the next few years, and I think you touched on this a bit in your discussion of collaboration as well, how is Wholesome integrating sustainability into its R and D process?
Antonio Carrillo:Look, it goes hand by hand. You cannot see sustainability without innovation and it is clear on the way our innovation center and colleagues around the Holsing family is working. Significant part of all the innovations we have in house are related to sustainability. We we cannot continue to advance and move the needle without active innovation. And the way we approach it, I think I also briefly mentioned it's in a twofold.
Antonio Carrillo:We have, we have an in house best in class innovation center and teams that are actively working on new formulations and advanced formulations. We have those decarbonisation expert teams working on the execution of our carbon capture projects. But we also have this focus on open innovation through the Holstein Make A Venture branch basically monitors on an annual basis more than 500 startups to try to identify that technology that could actually bring a breakthrough in the way we build today. Definitely innovation and sustainability go together.
David Bizley:So it's sort of intrinsically linked there. Then sticking with the theme of technology for a little bit longer, which new technologies and breakthroughs do you think are the most exciting and where do you think we'll see the biggest developments in that field in the next five or ten years?
Antonio Carrillo:All of them. I cannot, I think we've gone through, we've gone through a lot, David. My reflection on this question is we have the privilege of, of leaving the most exciting time for our industry, in my opinion, and not only leaving, but being an active part of it. Some of the biggest developments for the next few years have been already drafted in any of the concepts of our plant of tomorrow from efficiencies, integrating the state of the art technologies, artificial intelligence, digitalization, and being able to eventually produce net zero cements and net zero concrete at a scale, because this is already possible today, but we are looking at doing it at a scale.
David Bizley:Sure.
Antonio Carrillo:What I expect the next few years is is to see how these plants are basically getting executed and being a reality.
David Bizley:Okay. Excellent. So as we wrap things up for this episode of the World Cement Podcast, Antonia, do you have any final thoughts for our audience today?
Antonio Carrillo:If there is one message I'd like to leave with your audience is that decarbonizing the build environment is not only an idea, it's not only possible, it's already happening. At Holste, we see this as once in a generation opportunity to reinvent how the world builds to make it more sustainable, more simpler, more inclusive, and proud of being part of this transformation with innovation, with collaboration, and with a clear sense of purpose. We invite everyone, industry partners, policymakers, communities, and any stakeholder to be part of this journey with us. Thanks again for having me on the podcast. It's been a pleasure.
David Bizley:Well, Antonio, thank you for joining us today. That does about wrap things up for this episode of the Wealth Cement podcast. Thank you again, Antonio, for sharing your insights and exploring Wholesome's approach to sustainability with us. And as always, a big thank you to everyone in our audience too. If you liked this episode, make sure to rate, review and subscribe.
David Bizley:And if you haven't already done so, make sure to go back and check out some of our other excellent episodes as well. We're racking up quite a bit of a back catalog now, and it's all definitely worth checking out. Thank you, and goodbye for now. I just wanted to take a moment to remind you to register for WorldCement. It's free of charge and gives you access to the latest issues of WorldCement, both in print and online.
David Bizley:Every issue comes packed full of regional analysis, technical articles, project case studies, and the latest industry news. Simply head over to worldcement.com, click the Magazine tab, and register today. It's as simple as that. Happy reading!