September 26, 2008

PATRICK McCONNELL

Worldwide cement production is approximately 2.5 billion tonnes, with Canada producing 15 million tonnes a year, one third of which is exported. The combined global cement and concrete industry employs 27,000 people with sales estimated at $8 billion.

CEMENT ASSOCIATION OF CANADA

St. Marys Cement Inc., located in Bowmanville, ON instituted a state-of-the-art environmental management system at its plant and achieved reductions in emissions during 2006, earning it an Environmental Performance Award in the same year. A lime injection system reduced sulfur dioxide emissions by 53 per cent compared to the previous year. Installation of a selective non-catalytic reduction system utilizing ammonia injection reduced nitrogen oxide emissions by 18 per cent.

Environment

Burning tires as fuel pits cement manufacturers against environmental groups in legal battle in Ontario

Cement industry should do more, say environmental groups

IAN HARVEY

correspondent

BATH, ON

The battle over a proposal to burn tires in Lafarge’s kilns in Bath, Ontario is still simmering while cement producers struggle to press a claim their industry is becoming more environmentally friendly.

Even as Lafarge mulls the appeal of an Ontario Division Court decision which ordered a full Environmental Assessment Hearing over the Bath tire-burning proposal, the Cement Association of Canada (CAC) released a report highlighting steps taken collectively to reduce its environmental footprint.

“Between 2003 and 2006 there have been industry-wide reductions in emissions of sulphur dioxide by 14 per cent and of nitrogen oxides by 23 per cent,” says CAC’s president and CEO Pierre Boucher. “These are significant pre-cursors to air pollution.”

Further, he says the report shows, from 1990 to 2006 Canada’s cement industry improved energy efficiency by 11 per cent while reducing greenhouse gas emissions per tonne of cement by 6.4 per cent.

Boucher says the industry realizes the role it must play in reducing emissions and is working closely with provincial governments to attain that goal.

Worldwide cement production is about 2.4 to 2.5 billion tonnes, with Canada producing 15 million tonnes a year, five million tonnes of which are exported, says Boucher.

But part of the industry’s public relations problem is its energy sources. In Canada, the prime fuel used to create the 1,500°C temperatures to render limestone, clay and sand into Portland cement is coal, itself a resource with a poor environmental image.

Natural gas is too expensive, and besides, says Boucher, there probably isn’t enough gas available to feed the kilns across Canada.

To cut down coal use, the industry has been looking at alternative energy sources, including biomass – garbage and wood waste, tires, and even sewage sludge.

All of those choices have raised the ire of environmental groups which equate incineration with burning and therefore call the choices unacceptable, though burning tires is permitted in Quebec.

Other pilot projects are looking at using biomass and sewage sludge which is treated to remove moisture and rendered as pellets. The industry maintains that the incineration process is so intense that matter simply is rendered into plasma and incorporated into the final cement mix.

“Making cement is a dirty business and everyone knows it’s a dirty business,” says Mark Mattson, an environmental lawyer and president of Lake Ontario Waterkeeper, a grassroots group. “It’s a privilege to be able to discharge pollutants.”

He says the industry has made some strides, but suggests “it’s out of embarrassment because there really is no governmental control.”

The issue of burning tires is a long-standing hot button issue between the cement industry and environmentalists, and each has their own entrenched position.

Mattson says the cement industry already contributes five per cent of greenhouse gases generated in Canada, while Boucher counters it’s merely two per cent.

“Mostly it’s because we have to generate significant heat,” Boucher says, adding cement is the key ingredient in concrete, the indispensible component of modern construction. And once formed into concrete, since cement is only 10 per cent of the final product, it becomes one of the cleanest and least polluting components on the planet.

Even the residue of tires, coal, biomass and sewage sludge burned in kilns is incorporated into the final product, says Boucher. “There is really no ash. Even tires, which have many chemical components, including petrochemical and steel, end up as part of the cement, which in turn must meet Canadian Standards Association (CSA) standards.”

The industry is modernizing, he says, and the report shows clear progress.

“There is capital investment being made in technology and we are closing older plants where it is not feasible,” he says.

But, he says, cement and concrete sales are an $8 billion annual business creating over 27,000 direct and indirect jobs and it is an important industry which is competing globally.

While the industry is working to reduce greenhouse gases, it needs to explore and use other materials and not be hindered by “1960s and 1970s perceptions around incineration.”

With modest use of alternative fuels and supplementary cementing materials, the industry can make improvements in its environmental performance, he says.

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