Author: Ali Hasanbeigi, Ph.D.
The cement industry is one of the most energy- and carbon-intensive industries. There are various values in the literature regarding the total GHG emissions of the global cement industry some of which vague and unclear causing confusion among people who read and use these numbers.
In 2019, we published a report on international benchmarking of energy intensity and CO2 emissions intensity of the cement industry in 14 major cement-producing countries. These 14 major cement-producing countries account for over two-third of total world cement production. Therefore, we have a high coverage of global cement production in our study.
We used the weighted average CO2 intensities from our study and the global cement production to calculate total CO2 emissions of the global cement industry. We have considered the important issue related to the differences in clinker to cement ratio across countries and have adjusted our analysis to reflect these differences. Figure below shows the results of our analysis.
Global cement industry emitted around 2.3 gigaton of CO2 (Gt CO2) emissions in 2019.
Of this, 1.4 Gt CO2 is related to the process-related emissions (from chemical reaction during the calcination process), 0.6 Gt CO2 is related to fuel use (also called Direct emissions) and 0.3 Gt CO2 was from electricity use (also called Indirect emissions).
The energy-related emissions from the fuel and electricity use accounts for only 40% of total GHG emissions of the global cement industry. The remaining 60% of emissions is related to the process emissions from calcination.
Based on total cement industry emissions presented above and the global GHG emissions of 52 Gt CO2-e in 2019 (includes non-CO2 GHG emissions as well) reported in UN Emissions Gap Report 2020, the global cement industry accounts for around 4.5% of total global GHG emissions.
Based on the total cement industry emissions presented above and the global CO2 emissions of 33 Gt CO2 in 2019 reported by IEA, the global cement industry accounts for around 7% of total global CO2 emissions.
It is worth highlighting that only the annual GHG emissions of China, U.S. and India are higher than annual GHG emissions of global cement industry.
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