Overview of cement and concrete production in Latin America and the Caribbean with a focus on the goals of reaching carbon neutrality

Abstract

Carbon neutrality to limit global warming is an increasing challenge for all industries, particularly for the cement industry, due to the chemical emission of the process. For decades, reducing the clinker factor has been one of the main strategies to reduce the carbon footprint. Additional cuttings in the clinker content of cements seem possible with the upsurge of novel supplementary cementitious materials. This potential contribution represents only a fraction of the required carbon reductions for achieving the goal of carbon neutrality in the coming decades. This paper describes the current situation of the cement industry in Latin America and the Caribbean and the global opportunities and strategies to reduce the carbon footprint of cement and concrete and their adaptation to the regional conditions. Besides describing emerging supplementary cementitious materials, the potential contributions of industrialization and quality control are discussed. Moreover, limitations related to geography and standardization are analyzed. Regional considerations are made given the specific prospects of human development.

Economía circular en la industria de la construcción por impresión 3D: una solución de diseño, durabilidad, materiales y procesos para lograr la vivienda digna, asequible y sostenible en Nuevo León y México

“…To understand the advantages of 3DPCM, it should be noted that the conventional methods of informal construction and self-construction such as on-site concreting predominate in Latin America and Mexico, resulting in over-designed, low-quality housing, intensive use of resources, high generation of waste of materials, precarious procedures, inadequate storage, poor planning, and other typical characteristics of developing countries (Villagrán-Zaccardi et al, 2022). Therefore, reducing self-construction is one of the great challenges of Latin American CI to achieve sustainability goals, which involves strategies such as replacing the use of packaged cement with (iii) CI is the 9th most dangerous professional space in the USA with 21% of total annual deaths (OSHA, 2022).…”

Cement and concrete decarbonisation roadmaps – a meta-analysis within the context of the United Kingdom

“…Looking beyond Europe and the United Kingdom, decarbonisation strategies require a different perspective in regions which have higher demand for new housing and infrastructure, e.g. Latin America [45].…”

A two-fold strategy towards low-carbon concrete

“…Unfortunately, the availability of commonly used SCMs such as fly ash (by-product of burning coal) and slag (by-product of iron production in blast furnaces) is limited and, especially in the case of fly ash [10] and suitable slags, expected to rapidly decrease in the forthcoming decades [11]. The limited access to traditional SCMs largely explains the stagnation of the replacement level of clinker in blended cements since 2010 at around 25-30% substitution [1,12]. However, several countries are still using very low substitution levels and have opportunities to start by simply using limestone that does not pose many challenges up to substitution levels of around 15%.…”

“…The terms low-carbon, sustainable, green or environmentally friendly concrete are commonly used today by producers, owners, specifiers, designers and regulators, often referring to materials with substantially different qualities in terms of environmental footprint [33]. There is no clear definition on what "low carbon" means (reference, thresholds) and often the discussion ends in a matter of perception based on a specific market, leading to the definition of different, local descriptions of low-carbon concrete [3,11,12,34]. As an example of the observed scatter in the current situation, the average CO 2 footprint in 2019 for ready-mix concrete dispatches in Switzerland was 216 kg CO 2eq /m 3 concrete for a typical strength of 30 MPa [35].…”

“…In many cases, particularly in emerging economies such as India and Latin America, bagged cement use dominates the concrete market [12]. In these cases, it is common to find unjustifiably high dosages of cement used to produce low to medium performance concrete formulations.…”