Editorial | Firms should voluntarily reduce carbon footprint

Earlier this year, Mexico-based Cemex, the world’s fifth-largest cement company, and the biggest in North America, announced that it would slash its carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions by 40 per cent by 2030, on its way to reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Having done that, the company set an even more aggressive timeline for some of its targets, bringing them forward, by five years, to 2025.

Cemex’s programme is in keeping, the company said, with its commitment to the fight against global warming and climate change, and efforts to contain the rise in the earth’s temperature to below 1.5º Celsius by the end of the century, compared to pre-industrial times.

Indeed, as Cemex CEO Fernando Gonzalez remarked in a statement on the company’s greenhouse gas commitment, “climate action is the biggest challenge of our times”. A hotter Earth is already leading to rising sea levels, more and longer droughts, and more frequent and ferocious storms. These manifestations of climate change, due primarily to the activities of man, pose existential threats to many parts of the world, especially small island states like Jamaica.

“We commit to continue leading the (cement) industry in climate action not only because it creates value, but, more importantly, because it is the right thing to do,” Mr Gonzalez said.

NET ZERO PLAN

Notably, Cemex’s 2030 ambition, and its net zero plan for two decades later, have received the imprimatur of the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), a UN-endorsed, but mostly privately funded, body that establishes standards, as well as evaluates emission targets voluntarily set by firms to determine whether they are scientifically credible and in keeping with the 1.5º Celsius goal for the Paris climate agreement.

That Cemex, and others in the cement industry, are committed to significantly and quickly reducing their carbon footprint is important. For while cement and concrete are ubiquitous as the world’s most widely used building material, it is also the worst emitter of greenhouse gases.

Manufacturing Portland cement, as happens at the Caribbean Cement Company (CCC) Limited on the eastern fringes of Kingston, involves heating limestone, clay and other materials in rotary kilns at extremely high temperatures – at least 1,450º Celsius – to create clinker, which is then combined with gypsum, and crushed, to form the cement. The fossil fuels used to fire the clinker kilns is a major source of greenhouse gases. Additionally, the heating of limestone causes its own carbon emissions.

The estimate is that for every kilogramme of cement manufactured, between 0.5kg and 0.9kg of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO₂e) is emitted. Indeed, the cement/concrete industry accounts for eight per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, ranking only behind agriculture as a sector. Scientists say that if the industry were a county, it would be third among nations, after China and the United States, as an emitter of CO₂e.

In Jamaica, Caribbean Cement Company Limited, owned nearly 70 per cent by Cemex, produces around a million tonnes of cement annually, and plans to increase its capacity by 30 per cent with a US$30-million expansion, planned for the second half of 2022. How specifically CCC figures in Cemex’s net zero strategy is not clear.

In its policy document on the 2030 and 2050 ambitions, Cemex says it plans to attack the problem both through the maximisation of “the traditional CO₂ reduction levers and through investing in innovation”. This will include enhancing energy efficiency; maximising the use of alternative fossil fuels, including renewables; using new types of clinkers and clinker substitutes in its manufacturing process; and implementing carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) systems. The latter represents technologies that are not as yet generally available, or sufficiently competitive to encourage their widespread use by industry.

What, however, is unclear is how much of these initiatives will apply to Cemex’s Jamaica subsidiary. The issue has only peripherally been alluded to in Mr Gonzalez’s declaration in the August announcement of the Carib Cement expansion, that Cemex was committed to the “sustainable development of the Jamaican economy” and that the expansion project would create jobs “while minimising our carbon footprint”.

GREATER CLARITY

That is a welcome intention, which this newspaper hopes will not only materialise, but is expanded upon – and given greater clarity. The devil, as they say, is in the details.

But this is not only about Cemex and Carib Cement. Their matter provides a segue into the rest of the Jamaican industry. At present, the standards to which industries are held, with respect to how they pollute, is the responsibility of the National Environment Planning Agency (NEPA), a regulator that enjoys low confidence with the public. People believe that when it comes to protecting Jamaica’s environment, NEPA mostly assumes a supine posture. It hardly ever sees, people believe, a polluter who is not worth embracing. Indeed, NEPA’s voice has not been loud on matters of global warming and climate change.

Notwithstanding, the existential threat of a hotter planet transcends government. It ought not to require only the coercion of regulators for performance under self-declared CO₂e targets to be periodically verified by an ‘independent’ body.

In this regard, the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica, working with environmental NGOs, as well as science-based institutions – perhaps the University of Technology and/or The University of the West Indies – should spearhead a home-grown version of SBTi to encourage voluntary commitments to CO₂ reduction by industry. Further, the Government could consider incentives for companies that voluntarily take action to reduce their carbon footprint.