The Global Cement & Concrete Association (GCCA) has published its international definitions for low carbon cement and concrete.
The industry organisation said that producing definitions was “crucial” to providing a reference point for anyone that wants to be able to identify and buy green cement and concrete.
GCCA said that its definitions – which run to pages in length and depend on the mix – will bring transparency and trust in the markets and stimulate demand for low-carbon cement and concrete products.
Thomas Guillot, chief executive of the GCCA, whose members represent 80% of cement production capacity outside of China, as well as several Chinese manufacturers, said: “Concrete and its key binding ingredient cement are the most used materials on the planet after water and essential to the modern world – for delivering vital infrastructure, housing, cities and resilient communities.
“Building on our net zero commitment this is an important advancement on our journey towards net zero. We now call on policymakers, governments and the private sector to procure green cement and concrete and provide the key signals to our sector to accelerate decarbonisation.”
The GCCA definitions use the environmental product declaration (EPD) accounting method that is established in the construction value chain for products, particularly cement and concrete.
GCCA used the 2022 work by the International Energy Agency (IEA) on cement production as a starting point. The definitions are designed to be used with local benchmarks and targets to reflect different challenges, opportunities and rate of decarbonisation.
The global definitions for concrete product comprise seven bands including the near zero emissions and global reference thresholds. The band values in GWP units of (CO2e /m3) are plotted against concrete compressive strength. Concrete product is defined as readymixed concrete, precast concrete and concrete masonry elements.
For the near-zero cement label, the IEA suggests a threshold of 125 kg CO₂e per tonne of cement with 100% clinker content. For 0% clinker IEA recommends a value of a 40kg CO₂e per tonne of cement, considering calcined clay as the most emissions-intensive, scalable alternative cement constituent in use today. The maximum emission intensity qualifying as ‘low-emission’ cement, labelled as E, is set at 750 kg CO₂e per tonne of cement with 100% clinker content, decreasing to 240 kg CO2e per tonne of cement with a theoretical clinker factor of 0. This threshold was set approximately 100 kg CO₂e (or 12%) below the IEA's CEM I 100% clinker cement best available technology reference value of 850 kg CO₂e per tonne of cement. The remaining bands A-D are set with equal spacing in between.
See gccassociation.org for further details.
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