Vattenfall commits to purchasing near-zero cement

As a founding member of the First Movers Coalition (FMC), the global public-private partnership to scale new clean technologies to decarbonize the transport and materials sectors, Vattenfall now joins the latest sector launched.

“Vattenfall’s goal is to enable fossil free living within one generation. We can only reach the 1.5ºC target if we jumpstart the market for disruptive near-zero or zero-carbon technologies and make them as competitive as existing carbon-intensive solutions. Seven sectors today emit a third of global emissions. I am happy that Vattenfall now can increase the ambition also when it comes to the use of concrete and cement, in addition to the sectors steel, aviation and trucking where we already have committed,” says Anna Borg, President and CEO of Vattenfall.

The solutions may include (but are not limited to):

• Carbon capture, usage and storage
• Non-fossil-based supplementary materials in the cement
• Fuel switching
• Use of renewable electricity
• Efficiency improvements
• Decarbonised raw materials
• Alternative cement chemistries
• CO2 mineralization during curing

Around 80 percent of Vattenfall’s CO2-emissions from our purchases of goods and services come from materials, such as steel, concrete, aluminum and copper and the FMC commitment therefore is one important way to reach the company’s climate targets.

It is also in line with Vattenfall’s already existing target of halving our emissions from purchased goods and services by 2030.

“The hardest to abate sectors can go carbon-free by 2050 at a cost of less than 1% of global GDP if it is possible to make clean technologies affordable across their supply chains. Vattenfall is already working on initiatives to reduce emissions from use of concrete and other materials. To do that we aim at creating fossil free value chains, all the way from extracting the raw material, the use of energy during manufacturing until a ready product is available, and later recycled or reused at end of life. This commitment fits well with our strategy,” says Annika Ramsköld, Vice President Sustainability, Vattenfall.

Background:

The First Movers Coalition is an initiative by the World Economic Forum and the US State Department to tackle the hardest-to-abate sectors: seven industries that emit a third of global emissions: aluminium, aviation, cement and concrete, chemicals, shipping, steel and trucking. Vattenfall in 2021 committed within the sectors Steel, Aviation and Trucking and have now also added Cement and Concrete.