Climate-neutral cement and concrete industry

Purpose and goal

The overall goals are to reduce CO₂ emissions, to address common bottlenecks for accelerated climate-neutral change and to manage, and share, the risks and financing needs of a large-scale technology shift along the value chain.

Challenge

The sector's willingness to adapt is clear, but largely focused on its own company. The development and application of resource-efficient cement and concrete requires collaboration across several industries with a focus on common challenges and the distribution of risks along the entire value chain.

By 2050, 70 percent of the world's people are expected to live in metropolitan regions. With growing demand for investments in infrastructure and housing, concrete use is increasing exponentially.

Already, more than 30 billion tonnes of concrete / year are used today - cement accounts for about 6 percent of the world's CO₂ emissions. It requires an efficient industrial conversion with heavy emission reductions from the cement and concrete industries to produce climate neutral concrete.

Solution

BETCRETE 2.0 enables and accelerates the implementation of the roadmaps' ambitious objective
for a climate-neutral construction with concrete. Already by 2030, climate-neutral concrete should
be on the market and by 2045 all Concrete will be climate-neutral. Development of new concrete
recipes, alternative binders and circular economy shall be followed up with sustainability
indicators.

The project will further analyze and process the gaps that exist in technology and materials development as well as regulations, practices, market-driven needs and processes, for example before permit examinations, innovation procurement and financial adjustment solutions.

Effect

The industry strengthens its partnership in order to build legitimacy, consensus and support for the industry's value-creating activities as well as for the time- and capital-critical investments that the sustainable transition requires. The most important players for conversion - such as cement and concrete manufacturers, industry organizations, authorities, researchers and innovators, contractors, customers and financiers are part of the project's consortium.