What are Green Cement and Concrete?

Definitions and Scopes from Standards, Initiatives, and Policies Around the World

Since 2015, the emissions intensity of cement production has increased globally despite slowing slightly to a 1% increase in 2022. The IEA estimates that the emissions intensity of cement production needs to reverse its current trend and see an annual emissions intensity decrease of 4% through 2030 to remain on track for the world to reach the target of the Paris Climate Agreement.

In decarbonizing the global cement and concrete industry, standards, protocols, initiatives, and government policies have a significant role to play. In recent years, major growth has been seen in the number of standards, protocols, initiatives, and policies focused on decreasing the emissions from cement and concrete production. An additional level of complexity is introduced into the current efforts to decarbonize the cement and concrete industry whereby the standards, protocols, initiatives, and policies tend to focus on either the producers of cement and concrete, the demand side of cement and concrete procurement, the finance and funding side or some combination thereof. However, through the sheer number of standards, protocols, initiatives, and policies and the variation and complexity in features, target audience, assessment boundaries, targets, pathways, requirements, reporting, certifications, and validation procedures, there has not yet been a cohesive report that compiles the information in one place to support industry, government, and other stakeholders in achieving the goal to decarbonize the cement and concrete industry.

In this report, “What are Green Cement and Concrete?”, we aim to address this information gap and bring together a summary of the current major standards, protocols, initiatives, and government policies focused on reaching the goal of green/low-carbon cement and concrete production and decarbonization of this sector. Additionally, we provide a clear indication of whether a standard, initiative, or policy directs its focus on the cement and concrete producers, the demand side of cement and concrete procurement, and/or the finance and funding sectors. We assessed five different standards and protocols ( e.g. WRI’s GHG Protocols for Cement, Climate Bonds Initiative’s Criteria for Climate Bonds for the Cement and Concrete Industry), fifteen different initiatives and benchmarks (e.g. Industrial Deep Decarbonization Initiative (IDDI), Science Based Target Initiative for Cement (SBTI), First Movers Coalition Initiative, and the ConcreteZero Initiative) and several selected policies from some of the world’s largest cement and concrete producing countries/regions (i.e. the EU, U.S., China, India, Japan, South Korea, and Canada). We also review the whole lifecycle building embodied carbon policies currently enacted in various countries, U.S. states, and cities.

We additionally present a first-of-its-kind cross-comparison matrix that compiles the currently disaggregated standards, protocols, initiatives, and policies’ key information into one table to aid industry, government, non-government organizations, and academia in quickly comparing major standards, protocols, initiatives, and policies that are currently in place or soon-to-be-released at the time of writing this report.

This in-depth review of the global standards, protocols, and initiatives related to the decarbonization of the global cement and concrete industry also investigates the cement and concrete market focus areas (Table 1). Each of these is discussed in detail in the body of this report.

As can be seen in the table, there are a significant number of standards, protocols, and initiatives that focus on cement and concrete producers and to a significantly lesser extent on the demand and finance side. Additionally, we find that there is a lack of agreement on the definition of green cement and concrete across the standard, initiative, and policy landscape. The current lack of agreement may lead to confusion in the market for both producers and consumers of cement and concrete as well as policymakers about what green/low carbon cement and concrete are. A summary comparison of the definitions adopted by various standards, protocols, initiatives, and policies is summarized in Table 2 for cement and Figure 1 for concrete.

For cement, these definitions also differ in that only the IEA and IDDI (who adopted the IEA framework) consider the clinker ratio utilized. IEA classification of green cement set one of the lowest CO2 intensity levels compared to other standards and initiatives. For concrete, the First Movers Coalition has set the most ambitious targets for low-carbon concrete, followed closely by the ConcreteZero Initiative. The California Buy Clean program, if formally signed into law, will utilize the First Movers Coalition’s definition and would be the most ambitious low-carbon concrete emissions intensity requirement. It should be noted, however, that the lowest definitions of low-carbon concrete adopted by Concrete Zero targets 30%, 50%, and 100% of concrete procurement under this threshold by 2025, 2030, and 2050 respectively, while the First Movers Coalition requires 10% of the procurement to fall under their target values while other requirements apply to all procurement.

Additionally, of the definitions of low carbon concrete, all of the standards, initiatives, and policies have adopted a stepwise emissions intensity increase as compressive strength increases, except for ConcreteZero. Also shown in Figure 1, many of the policy requirements for procurement of low carbon concrete set by the U.S. General Services Administration and Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) requirements and those of many state and county levels policies follow closely with or exceed the U.S. national average concrete emissions intensities.

Additionally, some standards, protocols, initiatives, and policies have no set target number stated. Others, such as the Science Based Targets Initiative, Climate Action 100+, and Concrete Sustainability Council, utilize a relative approach to an industry baseline. Some align closer with the Paris Agreement’s 1.5 °C target, while others do not. There are also apparent differences in the disclosure requirements and verification processes across the board.

This report also finds that the policies of the world’s major cement and concrete-producing countries vary significantly. For example, the U.S., Canada, and Japan have stated targets of obtaining net zero cement and concrete production by 2050 and China by 2060. India has a goal to reach carbon neutrality in 2070. To obtain these goals, individual nations can drive down their cement and concrete industry emissions by implementing Green Public Procurement (GPP) programs with emissions intensity thresholds for the cement and concrete they procure, as is being done currently in the U.S. and many of its states (California, New York, and Colorado) with planned GPP programs more broadly in development in Canada for cement and concrete.

We find that in many of the nations assessed in this study, the primary emissions reduction policies are being carried out through energy efficiency legislation, as seen in India, Japan, South Korea, and China. Nations can additionally implement other policies and regulations and/or incentive programs to lower their cement and concrete production emissions intensities through the adoption of technologies and measures such as material efficiency, fuel switching to low/no-carbon fuels, decreasing clinker ratios, increased utilization of supplemental cementitious materials, and CCUS.

Upon completing a thorough analysis of the various cement and concrete industry decarbonization standards, protocols, initiatives, and policies, the following four key focus areas were identified as crucial to meeting Paris Agreement Goals and decarbonizing the cement and concrete industry.

1. A standard, protocol, initiative, or policy should be aligned with the Paris Agreement 1.5°C target. Deep decarbonization of the cement and concrete industry is crucial to achieving the Paris Agreement target.

2. Standards, protocols, initiatives, and policies should consider Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions and provide clear boundary definitions for the calculation of their emissions guidelines. This will allow the industry to move forward consistently in achieving the deep decarbonization targets.

3. Definitions of green/low carbon cement and concrete should be harmonized to limit confusion for producers, consumers, and policymakers.

4. The reliability and availability of product- and plant-level data should be increased, which will be very important to continue to monitor the progress of the industry and help in the identification of areas for approvement to achieve deep decarbonization. It should be noted that cement and concrete companies and plants and most governments collect and have all the data needed to comply with the requirements of the standards, protocols, initiatives, and policies listed in this report, although such data and information may not be publicly available.

Our study shows that there are several standards and protocols and many initiatives and policies related to the decarbonization of the cement and concrete industry. These standards, protocols, initiatives, and government policies often serve different purposes and address different segments or aspects of the cement and concrete value chain. Some target the demand side, while others target the supply side of the cement and concrete value chain. Some may be targeted toward the finance community, while some are for green public procurement policies. Therefore, it may not be possible to only have one standard for all purposes these initiatives and policies are trying to serve.

In addition, given the different contexts in which the cement and concrete industry operates in different countries, it is impractical to assume that a single standard would be used in all countries for all purposes around the world. Instead, we may need a few high-quality standards and protocols that are aligned with each other as much as possible. It is imperative that these few standards and protocols communicate and coordinate with each other to align their requirement and reduce the burden on the cement and concrete industry and other stakeholders such as policy makers as much as possible. Also, it is critical to bring developing countries’ perspectives into decarbonization standards and initiatives.

In chapter 2 of this report, we present a first-of-its-kind cross-comparison matrix that compiles the currently disaggregated standards, protocols, initiatives, and policies key information into one table to help industry, government, non-government organizations, and other stakeholders quickly compare major standards, protocols, initiatives, and policies currently in place or soon to be released at the time of writing this report. This cross-comparison matrix is followed by an emissions boundary comparison figure comparing the emissions boundary of several standards and initiatives.

To read the full report and see complete results and analysis of this new study, Download the full report from the link above.

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