It’s two hundred years and nine days since the patent for Portland cement was agreed.
It went to a guy living not that far from where I now live.
Portland cement is THE cement. It’s all around you, every day, one of the many things a modern person just takes for granted but would absolutely freak out anyone scooped up from 300 years ago.
We use a lot of it –
“Geologists have calculated that since the 19th century, enough concrete has been produced to pour two pounds of it on every square yard of the Earth’s surface” (Schwägerl, 2024.)
And in doing so, we release a certain amount of carbon dioxide, one of the gases that traps heat from the Sun and is, how to put this, cooking the planet. (7% of man-made emissions, is the number people seem to agree on).
Here’s a graph from Our World in Data.
So, with COP93 (or thereabouts) in Baku coming up, there is the traditional flurry of articles in newspapers and magazines read by those who like to think of themselves as Concerned Citizens about the new technologies that will make everything okay.
The articles are sincere, well-written and well-researched. Two I have read in the last 24 hours are here –
- Reed, S. 2024. Norway Cement Plant Aims to Clean Up. New York Times, October 29, p.1
- Schwägerl, C. 2024. Greening Concrete: A Major Emitter Inches Toward Carbon Neutrality. E360, October 29
And the Global Concrete and Cement Association will be fricking delighted (if I had more than two data points I’d make some concrete speculations on there being an actual deliberate campaign behind all this.
What does it all mean? It means we as a species are in the shit, because we spent the last 36 years believing the sweet little lies that a tiny tax here, a nip and tuck there would, would suffice. We derided the scientists as self-interested (somehow) and the hippies as eco-freak lunatics. Turns out though, that they were right. Oops.
I am doing a seminar – Carbon Capture Storage battles – past, present and near future (2025 to 2030) on Tuesday November 5th at 1pm. It’s free and open to anyone. More details, and registration are here. Or skip straight to the registration.
See also
On the UK and the issues around dispersed sites (most cement production is not in the “clusters”) see here.
and see also this
Anon, 2024. UltraTech Cement ties up with University of California for decarbonisation project. Business Line, October 25
Dateline: New Delhi
UltraTech Cement, an Aditya Birla Group company, has signed a collaboration agreement with the Institute for Carbon Management at the University of California, Los Angeles, to pilot a new technology- The Zero Carbon Lime (ZeroCAL)- developed by ICM that can significantly reduce carbon dioxide emissions from cement production.