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In Episode 4 of the World Cement Podcast, Senior Editor David Bizley is joined by Dr Andrew Minson of the GCCA to discuss:
- The ins and outs of the recently launched Low Carbon Ratings (LCR) system,
- The importance of educating end-users about low-carbon cement & concrete solutions,
- What’s being done to drive innovation,
- And steps producers can take to maximise their emissions reductions today.
Creators and Guests
Host
What is World Cement Podcast?
The World Cement podcast: a podcast series for professionals in the cement industry.
Hello everyone, and welcome back to the World Cement Podcast. My name is David Bizley, I'm the senior editor of World Cement. And in this episode, I'm joined by Doctor. Andrew Minson, Concrete and Sustainable Construction Director for the Global Cement and Concrete Association or GCCA. Hello everyone, sorry for interrupting, I just wanted to take a moment to remind you to register for WorldCement.
David Bizley: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. Simply head over to worldcement.com, click the Magazine tab and register today. It's as simple as that. Happy reading!
David Bizley:So, Andrew, welcome to the World Cement Podcast. It's fantastic to have you here with us. I know you've got some exciting new developments to share with our audience today.
Dr Andrew Minson:Well, David, thank you so much for having me. Delighted to be here.
David Bizley:Excellent. So let's kick things off then with a bit of an introduction. Andrew, for the for those who are still uninitiated, who exactly are the GCCA, and what is it that you guys do?
Dr Andrew Minson:Yeah. The GCCA, the Global Cement and Concrete Association, was founded in 2018. It came out of the Cement Sustainability Initiative under the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. That entity, the WBCSD, has over 200, two hundred 50 companies. Companies within that coalesce around common themes and the cement members coalesced around their their common sector and that coalescing became more and more formal.
Dr Andrew Minson:This cement sustainability initiative did some key things like creating the GNR transparent annual reporting. It created an EPD tool. It created some other assets. The and the CSI, they grew up and created the GCCA, which enabled far more members to join. We now have well over 40 producing companies from pretty much every country around the world, represent the majority of industry, and its primary focus our primary focus is around sustainability.
David Bizley:Okay. Excellent. Now on that note, you recently launched a low carbon rating system or LCR for cement and concrete. Tell us a bit about the thinking behind this initiative. What's the aim behind it, and who's it designed to help?
Dr Andrew Minson:Yeah. The fundamental question that we sought to answer will is what is low carbon? What is green cement? And and that question is being posed a lot, and it's the answer to that question is fundamental to things like low carbon procurement. So we've got a global roadmap, there are many country roadmaps to get to zero net zero by 2050 and those roadmaps include policies and they all include low carbon procurement.
Dr Andrew Minson:And beyond our sector, low carbon procurement is seen as a key driver towards decarbonization. And to have low carbon procurement, you need to be defining, well, what is low carbon? And our rating system is designed to support that process of defining what low carbon is.
David Bizley:Okay. Excellent. So before we get into exactly how the LCR works, tell us a bit about the process of how you set up the LCR. What did that entail? And did you happen to collaborate with any other organizations during this process?
Dr Andrew Minson:Yeah. We absolutely did collaborate. At the outset, the direction our members gave us was don't create something new, try and work with others because there's all already thinking going on. And the g seven presidency in 2022 was held by Germany. They commissioned the IEA to do some work on achieving decarbonization in the steel and cement sector, and part of that was they came up with definitions for low carbon steel and definitions for low carbon cement production.
Dr Andrew Minson:That was all in terms of production. And at that same time, the and and another entity, the Clean Energy Ministerial, which are governments, they all joined together to collaborate. They had a initiative in called Industrial Deep Decarbonization Initiative that's still underway, which is all about low carbon procurement in steel and cement and concrete. And they look the IA output as a starting point. And because so much of our product, men and concrete, is procured directly by government or through government agencies or funding, we felt that this IDDI initiative was the right one to join forces with to develop their low carbon rating system.
David Bizley:Okay. Excellent. Now moving to the LCR itself, it provides ratings for products on a scale from double a through to g. Why not just publish the EDP value? Why do we need a letter rating?
David Bizley:What does this help with?
Dr Andrew Minson:It's a great question, and we we get that. We have had that question before. And so our rating so we just come back one step. Our rating system is based on the GWP value from an EPD. Now in brackets, if for some reason a country is is getting GWP values somehow else, we can actually adapt our system to accommodate that.
Dr Andrew Minson:But but we strongly recommend using EPDs. If you're doing EPDs and you've the EPD GW GWP value, why not just use that GWP value? So primarily, it's because the non expert does not know whether a particular value of GWP is low or high. Is is 500? Is 500 good or bad?
Dr Andrew Minson:I've got no idea. I mean, if you're not an expert in the in the industry, how would you know? And that's true for cement and concrete. Now for the concrete ratings, there's even additional reasons which are maybe even stronger for why this letter rating is so valuable. So firstly, the letter ratings enable comparison of products of different strengths.
Dr Andrew Minson:So concrete isn't one product. Higher strength con concrete will have a higher g GWP value. So if you only have GWP values, only an expert would know whether this low strength concrete or this high strength concrete has a good GW value or not. What, you know, what is good or bad because you'd expect the the high strength to have a higher value, but how much higher is it? So the lever ratings enable comparison across strengths.
Dr Andrew Minson:That's really key. Really key. Because it's, you know, I'm a structure engineer by training. I I was in there in there doing real projects for ten years. One of your decisions as a structure engineer is what strength concrete is the right strength to use?
Dr Andrew Minson:And now that sustainability is more important, part of that question should be around not just the CO2 GWP value of that concrete per cubic meter, but if you've got a higher strength concrete, you've got less volume of concrete. So how do you make that trade off? So to be able to compare different strengths is important. Now secondly secondly, our system uniquely enables comparison through the letter ratings between countries where the EPD standards are different. So North America and Europe have different standards for EPDs, and therefore you cannot compare an EPD GWP value from North America to Europe.
Dr Andrew Minson:But if you turn it into a letter in The USA, you turn it into a letter in Europe, you can then compare those letters, because our methodology has the adaptation built into it for those different countries. Right.
David Bizley:Okay. Excellent. And looking at those categories themselves, how did you sort of calculate those brackets? And I suppose, turning that on its head, how can producers, or how do they determine the rating of their products when using these categories?
Dr Andrew Minson:Okay. So the AHT, they all have their bands defined by the GWB value that you read off the EPD. The manufacturer, the producer can just get their GWB value from their EPD, look at the table and go, this product is a c or this product is a d. It's a very straightforward process. We just come back one step.
Dr Andrew Minson:Why have we got those number of categories? Why do we not have fewer or more? We actually just took the steer from what the IA published in May 2022. They have an A to E rating with a near zero and we attributed that near zero a double a because we wanted to have just all, it's just easier. And we added an f and a g at the top, an open ended g in order that all products can get a rating.
Dr Andrew Minson:We felt it was really important to get everyone on board with this process. So even if you've got a G, you might not like to publish your G, but you're a G.
David Bizley:But you know where you stand, I think is the key thing.
Dr Andrew Minson:Yeah. You're in it.
David Bizley:Okay. Excellent. And on a related note as well, are these ratings able to take into account sort of future or yet to be fully implemented technologies like CCUS, which is going to be key for reaching those net zero goals?
Dr Andrew Minson:Yeah. You're right. CCUS, absolutely key. And the quick answer, yes, it will because EPDs will be updated to recognize CCUS. The North American cement PCI is just soon to come out, and it does exactly that, and we expect all EPDs will do the same.
Dr Andrew Minson:And with other technologies, you know, c o two being captured into synthetic aggregates, and those aggregates have been put into concrete, that also will be taken into account in the EPD, and therefore our ratings will therefore also give it credit.
David Bizley:Okay. Fantastic. At the launch, you mentioned one of the advantages of the LCR was sort of increased transparency when it came to these kind of products. Can you just explain a bit more about how that exactly is being manifested?
Dr Andrew Minson:Yeah. I think I think it's two things. One is goes back to your question about whether why letter ratings. If you've got letter ratings and they're more comprehensible to the non expert, that gives you more transparency in itself rather than just people plus publishing numbers which are meaningless to many people. The second bit of transparency is that you will probably get more EPDs being developed and therefore that by itself gives you transparency.
Dr Andrew Minson:And thirdly, in communication, we often read about this is a low carbon product or this is a low carbon cement and and actually what by what definition? So this gives a definition And so therefore, I think there'll be less confusion out in the marketplace because at the moment, people are not trying to pull the wool over people's eyes or or be confusing. If there's no distinction what low carbon is, three people can say their products are low carbon, but they actually mean all slightly different things.
David Bizley:Okay. And forgive me for being cynical to a degree, but how are you verifying that producers actually apply the correct rating?
Dr Andrew Minson:Yeah. Yeah. No. That's great. That's great.
Dr Andrew Minson:So the fundamental verification isn't for us. It's the EPD methodology. EPDs, by definition, they are third party verified, and and therefore, that's the value. And, also, EVs have to be in the public domain. We've already seen the first implementation of this is in Germany, and so the cement association in Germany, BDZ, they are running as effectively as well, a certification, a labeling system.
Dr Andrew Minson:So they're doing that checking for Germany for the cement industry, and it will depend on different countries whether that formality is applied as well or whether the EPD verification and publication together with side by side with the rating publication is sufficient in that country.
David Bizley:Okay. And with the aim of making this a global rating system, how exactly are you achieving the balance of comparability between regions while still allowing for regional adaptation?
Dr Andrew Minson:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. We've been involved with it.
Dr Andrew Minson:I've already mentioned the date, May 2022, lots of stakeholder engagement, discussions with people who developed systems just for their own country or even sub country. I'm increasingly convinced that we've got the balance right. In some respects, we're doing very little. We're just providing this a a to g rating. What we're not doing is saying, what is the current c o two performance, average c o two performance, performance, or what's the current performance of the best 20 percentile concrete in in in a particular region or subregion?
Dr Andrew Minson:We're not doing any of that, and we're not even saying what the target should be. You know, should you be a b? Should you be a c? We're not doing that either because all of that is local. What we're providing is the foundation that underpins those things, and it underpins it by being global and static over time so that your performance, the average performance, the baselines, the benchmarks within a region, within a city, the north of a country, they will hopefully be improving over time, and you'd expect the targets or the threat or the thresholds by which government policy is implemented to be more aggressive over time with lower CO two.
Dr Andrew Minson:All of that will change over time. But if it's overlaid on something with a static, which is constant and global, it will enables constant reporting. It enables constant progress to be understood. It enables an international contractor to say, actually, for my projects, I'm wanting to have this rating going forward, and and that then can be adopted within the locally by the country in a more appropriate way. So we think we've got that balance right between between local and global, and what we're doing is we're avoiding proliferation of schemes where who knows what an ABC is because which scheme.
David Bizley:Okay. Excellent. You mentioned that one of the other benefits of the LCR was to drive demand for greener products. And following on that theme, how important would you say it is to educate the general public about the choices made when it comes to construction materials? And I suppose, what kind of things could the industry be doing to further that cause?
Dr Andrew Minson:Having worked in this industry a long time as a designer, it's one of those things that the built environment is something they take for granted until something goes wrong. And when something goes wrong I was recently in Dresden and the bridge collapsed there in last September, and it was really interesting to to hear the mayor speak about that and Germans who were at the conference who hadn't been to Dresden before. I was in London when there was a catastrophic fire in 2017 where over seventy people got killed. When things go wrong in the building run, then the public pay attention. And the primary thing that we must not forget in the drive to decarbonize the build environment, which is absolutely important and absolutely imperative, we must not forget resilience.
Dr Andrew Minson:And it's not just resilience to climate exacerbated risks such as wind and higher rainfall and higher heat and and the problem of heat stress. It's also the things that we've known for a long time and and designers have been known for a long time in terms of fire safety and and and robustness and protection against disproportionate clients. We must not forget all those things because they are what society is relying on us in the construction sector to deliver. Going back to your question, how much they make, how much they need to know about the carbon choices. I think probably the general public needs to know less about that.
Dr Andrew Minson:But there are hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people involved in the complexity of the construction build environment who value chain, which need who need to understand more, and we've definitely got a role to educate them. I know that professional institutions are doing a great job in increasing their sustainability training and the modules and professionalism. And at university level, the the sustainability now in terms of the education is know? And it has ten, fifteen years where I am in The UK, and I'm sure it's been rolled out elsewhere around the world in a in a much more comprehensive way to raise up raise that knowledge base and that language, that the understanding of the language of sustainability, to put put carbon in the middle of what is traditionally the triangle of time, cost, and quality. So time, cost, and quality is what designers are always brought up having to deliver.
Dr Andrew Minson:That's what clients want. The clients make decisions, you know, is is the quality more important than the cost? Can I can I pay more to get a high quality? Carbon needs to be in the middle of that. Carbon has to be in the middle of that.
Dr Andrew Minson:And one of the ways that can be driven through is through low carbon procurement. And to do that we need to know what low carbon means in terms of whole project, and we need to know what low carbon means in terms of product, and that's what our LCR is doing in terms of cement and concrete.
David Bizley:Okay. Excellent. Well, then in order to reach net zero, the cement and concrete industries are going to have to embrace some form of innovation across basically all of their processes. And obviously developments like the LCR are one example of the GCCA supporting innovation in these industries. How else have you guys been working to promote innovation across the cement and concrete production sectors?
Dr Andrew Minson:One of the one of the first things we did when we were founded was set up the DCA research network with over 40 academic institutions from around the world and about 30 industrial partners. They are doing fundamental research to decarbonize the sector, And the collaboration that you get between research departments in completely different regions around the world building on each other's shoulders. Know I know that's what the scientific community broadly is supposed to do, and we've seen it actively done and and really, I think, probably accelerated or given a boost by having this research network and with the industrial partners right there informing what is gonna be a benefit to industry to decarbonize. So that's called the research network under our umbrella of Innovandy, our innovation. So the other bit that's under this umbrella of Innovandy is our what we call our open challenge.
Dr Andrew Minson:It's open because anyone in the world can accept the challenge, and we issue a new challenge every year, which is a subset of how the sector can decarbonize. It might be new materials. It might be on CCUS. And those startups that invite startups to enter the challenge, and those startups then present to the industry and consortia who think that that startup have got a great idea, who will benefit from their support. It might be access to facilities, access to expertise, materials, cash, all those things that the startup might need to go out to the next stage to bring their great idea to fruition to help decarbonize.
Dr Andrew Minson:So those are the two big things, and through that open challenge with the startups, we've obviously made relationships with many startups, and we've now got what we call an entrepreneur network as well under this Innerbandi banner.
David Bizley:Okay. Excellent. Now taking a moment to zoom back out a little bit to cover the cement industry's decarbonization process as a whole, and then those listeners who joined us at EnviroTek back in March will recall I asked you this question previously. But for those who weren't able to join us, is the cement industry currently on track to reach its net zero targets by 02/1950? You know, how are we doing?
Dr Andrew Minson:Yeah. We're doing pretty well. Think I think can can more be done? Yes. When you try and track things, you often look in the rear vision mirror and say, well, what have we achieved?
Dr Andrew Minson:You sometimes try and look forward to say, what what are the conditions that we're coming across that are gonna help us improve our performance? I think if I if I just do the looking forward bit, I said earlier, the roadmaps, not only are they talking about technology and the contribution of each technology to get to zero, but they also talk about the policy enablers. And that's what that's what we look forward to. Where are these policy enablers that are gonna enable the industry to deliver? And the the policy enabling, what we're seeing ahead of us probably isn't it's a mixed bag.
Dr Andrew Minson:There's there's aspects that aren't as promising as they should be. So I'll I'll give you an example. We we we're an industry that where we've got the right policies, we support society in delivering a huge amount of treatment of unrecyclable and unreusable waste. But where the policies are not supportive where the policies are not supportive, the percentage of energy we require that comes from waste is in single digits compared to 80 or 90% in some kilns, and that's because the policies aren't right. So looking forward, we need to get more policy we need to get the policies right in those areas to support us.
Dr Andrew Minson:We've been talking about low carbon ratings today. One of the policy supports we need is procurement, and our rating system will support that. I think that the biggest encouragement, go to the green cement technology tracker that we do together with LEEDit, l e a d, LEEDIT. It's called the green cement technology tracker, and look at that and see what CCUS projects are progressing around the world and what calcined clay projects are progressing around the world, and you'll be really encouraged. I think that's the that's the best example of of encouragement you can have because the CTO is that's the big ticket item, and real progress has made been made on that.
Dr Andrew Minson:And since we launched our roadmap in 2021, that's, I think, the most exciting developments.
David Bizley:Okay. Fantastic. And then to close and on that theme of looking ahead a little bit, the GCCA's twenty fifty net zero roadmap, as we mentioned a bit earlier, breaks down the required contributions from a range of technologies and processes. What would you say is the most impactful thing that a cement producer can do today in order to maximize their emissions reduction over the long term?
Dr Andrew Minson:Actually, you know, maybe maybe it's just because it's currently on the top of my mind. But if if the producer is outside Europe, I would say it's work with their other cement producers and their national association to get change in policy to allow or enable greater treatment of societal waste in their kiln. In in in Latin America, our colleagues at FISEM are doing a great job to try and achieve this and the and and if you get waste treated in the kiln rather than landfilled, the amount of methane that you can save, the methane that comes out of the landfill is enormous. If you're in Africa, a lot of this waste is just open waste burning, and it's a it's a and and the waste is a blight on society. If you get the policies right, then that waste can be not causing that damage that it's currently causing, and it could be used in a cement kiln with the added benefit that it's replacing fossil fuels, which would otherwise be burned in the cement kiln.
Dr Andrew Minson:So that I think would be the number one thing. But maybe I should say the number one thing is get behind these low carbon ratings.
David Bizley:Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Okay, Andrew. I think on that note, that about wraps things up for this episode of the World Cement Podcast.
David Bizley:So thank you so much for joining me and for telling us all about the Low Carbon Rating System and those other areas of the GCCA's activities.
Dr Andrew Minson:David, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much.
David Bizley:And if you'd like more information on what the GCCA is up to, simply head over to www.gccassociation.org. That's www.gccassociation.org. I hope you all enjoyed this episode of the World Cement Podcast. Do keep an eye on your notifications and inbox as there are more episodes on the way. And if you do like the content we're producing, please show your support by subscribing, rating, and reviewing where possible.
David Bizley:Until next time, goodbye for now. Hello, everyone. 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. Simply head over to worldcement.com, click the magazine tab, and register today.