The Environment Committee of the European Parliament wants wants to ban the rights for the cement industry for free CO2 emission rights for building materials. This means we have to use greener building materials to contribute to a more sustainable world.
The cement industry has to buy her allowances at auction (Emission Trading System) starting from 2020 and 2030. The recent conclusion of “Carbon Market Watch”, an organization that follows the emissions market, is evident and shows the cement industry earned between 2008 and 2015 about 5 billion in excess free undistributed rights.
In February 2017 the European Parliament will vote on this proposal and the final decision follows in consultation with the European leaders.
CO2 emission building materials: background
Concrete is the most used building material allover the world. We need Cement in order to be able to make concrete. In addition we need a huge amount of ‘marl’ (calcium carbonate) to make cement. Calcium carbonate degrades during the furnace process in amongst 56% calcium oxide and 44% CO2!
In 2014 more than 4.1 billion m3 of cement is produced and processed worldwide, with a weight of more than 8.1 trillion kilograms leads to the same amount of CO2 emissions! Therefore the cement and concrete industry is responsible for 5% of the global CO2 emissions.
The biggest producers are located in China (54%) and India (7%).
Source: statista.com
The winners: green building materials
In addition to all the initiatives already taken to make cement and concrete more environmental friendly and which are described in several articles, we offer a greener alternative, namely: magnesium oxide board materials. Magnesium oxide (MgO) boards are widely used in China, Japan, Australia, USA and Korea. In Europe, it is still a relatively new building material. SINH™ board is one of the few brands active in The Netherlands and in the rest of Europe. To produce magnesium oxide you only need the half of temperature of the production of cement and concrete. In conclusion our solution leads directly to a 50% cut of the total amount of CO2 emissions.
From now on it is: green building materials first!
It’s easy as that!
Download our MgO carbon footprint Infographic for free!
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