With regards to combating climate change, the European cement industry currently finds itself trapped in a deadlock situation. It generates considerable CO2 emissions (7% of global CO2) but in the last decade made no progress in reducing them. At the same time, commercially available abatement technologies already have been exploited to a large extent and strong forces discourage low carbon innovation in the sector. Since the majority of emissions are process related, and no alternative material exists at the same scale, cement is considered one of the hard-to-abate industries. To escape the current mitigation deadlock, efforts to develop breakthrough technologies must be intensified significantly. The Cement Transition Initiative was created with the mission to advance technology development in selected key domains across the cement value chain. It unites research institutions and other stakeholders to collaborate on decarbonizing the cement sector.

Direct emissions EU28 (kg CO2/t cement)
CSI / GNR database
