When we think of things that
release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, we often think cars and
factories, but a huge emitter of CO2 that's often
overlooked is cement. Cement is kind of the glue
that holds concrete together, and concrete is used more than any other material
on the planet other than water. Concrete is used to build our
bridges, our dams, our roads, our sidewalks, even our skyscrapers. This material has helped us build
civilizations, but it has also strained our environment
in the process. And most of that strain is due
to the production of cement, a key ingredient in concrete. For every one tonne of cement produced,
there is a tonne of CO2 that is released into the atmosphere. Every year, more than 4 billion
tonnes of cement are produced, accounting for around 8 percent
of global CO2 emissions. To put that in context, if the
cement industry were a country, it would be the third-largest emitter
of CO2 in the world. Atmospheric CO2 levels are directly
correlated with rising global temperatures and both have
been rising drastically. If the planet's temperature gets
too warm, climate scientists predict bouts of extreme weather, rising sea
levels and scarce food supplies. One company working to reduce the
carbon footprint of cement is New Jersey-based start-up,
Solidia Technologies. Solidia says their cement mixture and
curing process can cut CO2 emissions by up to 70 percent. But even if Solidia's technology works,
it still faces a major challenge: convincing conventional cement and
concrete makers to use it. Right now, there just aren't
a lot of people asking for lower-carbon concrete or are willing to
pay a premium if there is. To understand the mechanics
of how Solidia's technology works, it's important to
first understand the difference between cement and concrete and
the conventional process for making each. Cement is usually composed of
a mixture of limestone and clay and is one of the ingredients in
concrete along with water, sand and gravel. The most widely used cement
today is known as Portland cement. Most of the emissions
associated with concrete actually occur in the production of the cement. The way that you generally make cement
is you mine limestone from the earth and then you mix it with some
other things and heat it up in a kiln to very high temperatures,
about 1,500 degrees Celsius. Then there's a chemical transformation
that takes place and there's carbon dioxide that's emitted as
part of that chemical transformation and also carbon dioxide emitted
with the energy associated with heating up the kiln in which the
cement is produced to such high temperatures. What comes out of the
kiln is a substance known as clinker, which is then cooled, ground,
and mixed in with limestone to create cement. In order to reduce
the carbon footprint of its cement, Solidia Technologies had to slightly
alter the chemistry of the mixture. But the process and
equipment needed remains largely unchanged. In order to make Portland
cement, you use limestone and sand, you mix it about two thirds one
third and you put it into a kiln that reacts at about
1,500 hundred degrees Celsius. So really hot. We take exactly
the same raw materials, but would change the recipe a little bit. We mix it about 50/50, and that
reaction happens at a much lower temperature, about 1,200
degrees Celsius. Now what that means to the cement
company is instead of emitting one tonne of CO2 for every tonne of
cement, they emit about 40 percent less than that, and they use 30
percent less energy to make that same amount of cement. They also get more
cement with the same amount of raw materials. Solidia cement also
cures or hardens into concrete differently than Portland cement, reacting
with CO2 that the company injects into a drying chamber
instead of with water. As the cement hardens, the CO2
becomes trapped in the final, concrete product. When you make Solidia cement,
we are cutting the CO2 emissions at least by 30 percent. And when we cure Solidia cement, when
we make the concrete, we add an additional 20-30 percent of CO2,
we consume it during curing. So this adds up to 50-60
percent and depending on the formulations, our CO2 savings can go
up to 70 percent. Another benefit: Solidia helps
with water conservation. The concrete industry uses about 3
trillion liters of water a year. That's a million
Olympic swimming pools. Solidia's technology doesn't
consume any water. So especially for water starved
areas India, China, Southern California, we give them the option
to be able to recycle their water. When we talked to people
in the Mideast, that's actually the number one thing they want to
talk about is water reclaimed. Solidia Technologies also says its
product makes financial sense. We actually find that both on the
cement side and the concrete side, if you use our technology, you
actually end up saving money. Most of the cost associated with
manufacturing cement is in the energy that you use. And we actually reduce that by about
30 percent, in addition to not having to use a lot of expensive
raw materials that they use today. On the concrete side, they
don't have a CO2 problem. They don't have a CO2 fee
that's going to come attack them. So it really is about performance. And so for us, it's better colors,
it's the ability to process it more readily, it's more durable. And I can, instead of curing it in
a week, or two weeks, or three weeks, it takes us 24 hours. So it's a lot easier for them
to get it out in the market. So in the end, we actually are
going to save the industry money. But despite all of this, experts
say that there are significant obstacles for Solidia's
technology going forward. Right now, the Solidia product can
only be made in a controlled environment. And so as a consequence,
they can only make blocks, whereas the vast majority of
concrete is ready-mix concrete. And that's what we see in
the trucks that are driving around. Ready-mix concrete accounts for nearly
three fourths of all concrete used. So if Solidia technology is to
go mainstream, it needs to find a way to make ready-mix without
the need for a strictly-controlled environment. It's a problem that Solidia
says it's already working to solve. We're just getting into
the market right now. We're doing test pours all around
the country and quite frankly, in Europe as well. So we're hoping within
the next year you'll see us in the ready-mix market as well. Another big hurdle
is code regulations. This cylinder right here will go into
the lab and they'll put a couple hundred thousand pounds of force
on it, crush it until it breaks and measure the load. And that gives us a pretty good
indication of the performance of that particular concrete mix. We have to make sure as a
company that our technology is validated. It's a 2,000-year-old industry. They really haven't had a new product
in a couple of hundred years. So you've got to make sure
that industry standards recognize the performance and validate that. So we're working with the Federal
Highway Administration in the U.S., that's DOT, they kind of do the
screening for the DOTs and we're working with several state DOTs to
validate the technology with them. But we also work with universities
like Purdue, South Florida, Oregon State, that will take our product
and test it under standard testing conditions. But we have to test
everything by third parties because nobody's gonna believe our data. One of Solidia's earliest partners
and investors is Lafargeholcim, the largest maker of building
materials in the world. Earlier this year, the two companies
announced that they would be supplying EP Henry, a
New Jersey-based pre-cast, concrete manufacturer with Solidia cement. Our biggest challenge is this will
be a structural material, so it has to pass through certain codes. You have to get certified and
this is a long process. So initially, we chose products
that doesn't really require very intensive code or regulations. So that's why we
picked pavers and blocks. They are easiest to the market. Solidia Technologies is not alone in
trying to reduce the carbon footprint of cement. In fact, the
green cement market is expected to grow significantly from $21 billion in
2018 to $43 billion by 2026. Other companies working on green
cement technology include Blue Planet, CarbonCure and Carbicrete. Unlike Solidia Technologies, Carbicrete does
away with the need for cement in concrete altogether by replacing
it with steel slag, a byproduct of steelmaking. This new mix is poured into
molds like conventional concrete and cured with CO2. And it's not just
companies taking up the call to action, academics are
weighing in too. Despite all their work with
perfecting the cement formula, Solidia says it's not trying to
become a concrete maker. Our mission as a company is
to help others reduce their footprint. There are plenty of people that
do a great job making cement. There are plenty of people that
do a great job making concrete. Us adding capacity to that actually
will slow down the process because you need a lot of money
to spread this all around the world. So we're really focused on helping
them transition to this new technology because we think that's going to
be the fastest way to get us into the market. If Solidia
Technologies is able to convince the major players in the multi-billion
dollar cement and concrete market to use its technology, it could
have a significant impact on our environment. The company says global
adoption of Solidia products would reduce CO2 emissions by
4 percent per year. That is double the CO2 savings that
we would get if we grounded the entire aviation industry. Solidia also says it would reduce
energy consumption by as much as 260 million barrels of oil and save
3 trillion liters of fresh water per year. We know that Solidia
is scalable because we've already worked with the largest cement
company in the world, Lafargeholcim, to help us basically prove that they
can make our cement anywhere in the world on any existing kiln
with the raw materials they have today. So know we can do
it on the cement side. On the concrete side, we're
not changing their mixing process. We're not changing how they put it
into a mold or a form. We're just changing the way that
it reacts instead of putting water in, we put CO2 in. So we have to
make a little bit of a change there, but not enough so that
really disrupts their current operating process. So we feel pretty good
about the ability to scale it.
