A cement plant in Brevik, Norway. Cement production accounts for nearly 7 percent of energy-related emissions.
Credit...Thomas Ekström for The New York Times

Cement Is a Big Polluter. A Plant in Norway Hopes to Clean It Up.

Heidelberg Materials is betting it can profit from an expensive process that will reduce the carbon dioxide emitted from one of the world’s most polluting industries.

by · NY Times

Even in the idyllic Norwegian summer, with anglers casting for mackerel from nearby piers, the century-old cement plant on the edge of the harbor town of Brevik is a forbidding place. The screeching of gulls echoes off the mud- and dust-caked passageways between concrete walls, which rise on the edge of the water like the ramparts of a medieval fortress.

“Imagine being here on a winter day,” said Vetle Houg, managing director for cement in Norway for the plant’s owner, a German company called Heidelberg Materials.

Despite its ominous appearance, the plant promises to be a milestone in efforts to tackle climate change by taking steps to clean up cement production, one of the world’s most polluting industries but one necessary to create an essential ingredient for a wide range of construction projects, such as highways and office buildings.

For more than two years, engineers have been erecting a set of towers and columns at the plant, clearing away snow and ice in the wintertime. As Mr. Houg toured the site, workers were fine-tuning equipment that held chemicals designed to absorb vast quantities of the carbon dioxide emitted through cement production. More than half a ton of the gas arises from every ton of cement that a plant like this turns out.

Early next year, carbon dioxide from the facility will be chilled to a liquid, loaded onto ships and carried to a terminal near the city of Bergen, farther up the Norwegian coast. From there, it will be pumped about 70 miles offshore into rocks a mile and a half below the bottom of the North Sea.

Dominik von Achten, chairman of Heidelberg’s management board, described the tortuous journey to this point, including lining up suppliers and shippers and deciding on the right carbon capture technology, as “an art in itself.”

“The whole thing has to make business sense,” he added. “Otherwise, your investors are in the trees.”

Still, companies like Heidelberg are starting to feel heat from governments, investors and customers, especially in Europe, to tackle emissions.

Mr. von Achten said he feared Heidelberg’s products would not be used in building the cities of the future unless the company demonstrated a plan to curb their harmful effects.

“We want to be the first in the industry to show that this industry can be fully decarbonized,” he said. “That is the mission of Brevik.”

It helps that the Norwegian government is underwriting 85 percent of the up to 400-million-euro cost of what will be the first large, commercial-scale effort to strip carbon dioxide from cement and bury it.

Even with that assistance, cement from Brevik is likely to be expensive. Hasan Muslemani, head of carbon management research at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, estimated that the cost of capturing the carbon dioxide would be up to double current cement prices.

Heidelberg is counting on customers to be willing to pay more for a product that comes with green credentials. The company, which reported income of about €2 billion on revenue of €21 billion for 2023, says it is already lining up orders for building materials from the plant.

The only deal it will disclose is a preliminary agreement to furnish concrete for a center to be built in Stockholm for exhibits and other activities related to the Nobel Prizes.

The effect on the climate “is an important part of the project, and we aim to choose the best cement possible from a CO2-perspective,” said Lotta Wristel, the Nobel project’s director.

Ms. Wristel said the price had yet to be agreed on. Mr. Houg suggested during a presentation to journalists that the carbon-free cement might cost three times the market price for ordinary cement, around €130 a metric ton. Other Heidelberg executives insisted prices were still to be determined.

Cement production, which accounts for nearly 7 percent of energy-related emissions, presents one of the knottiest problems for emissions reduction. The global economy seems unlikely to be able to do without large quantities of the crucial binding agent for concrete and other materials for the foreseeable future.

Vetle Houg, the managing director for cement in Norway for the plant’s owner, Heidelberg Materials, during a tour of the plant. Workers there have been fine-tuning equipment to absorb vast quantities of the carbon dioxide emitted through cement production.Credit...Thomas Ekström for The New York Times

“It’s literally a building block of society,” said Sara Budinis, who tracks the industry at the International Energy Agency. “So the demand for cement is not expected to decline over time.”

Yet little progress has been made in reducing emissions from cement production because much of the carbon dioxide comes from a chemical reaction during the actual process. As a result, stripping out the carbon is the main route available to large-scale reduction, experts say. Because of the chemistry, “there is little alternative to CO2 capture,” said Paul Fennell, professor of clean energy at Imperial College London.

Mr. Fennell said improved carbon capture technologies would help lower costs over time. In addition, Heidelberg estimates that cement accounts for only up to 2 percent of the expense of a large building project but for perhaps 50 percent of the emissions, so using carbon-free cement is a relatively inexpensive means of cutting emissions.

The Brevik plant is likely to be the first industrial operation to begin disposing of its carbon dioxide through a carbon capture and storage project known as Northern Lights. The Norwegian government is providing 20 billion Norwegian kroner (or about $1.9 billion) of the 30 billion Norwegian kroner needed for the first phase.

Norway and other countries, including Britain, hope they can parlay their experience in oil and gas into collecting carbon dioxide from around Europe and storing it in depleted natural gas fields and other geological formations.

The first phase has attracted three other customers for disposal of the gas, including a fertilizer plant in the Netherlands and power plants in Denmark.

Northern Lights is owned by three major energy companies: Shell, TotalEnergies and the Norwegian state-controlled Equinor. Their presence has drawn the fire of some environmental activists, who label carbon capture a ruse to prolong the use of oil and gas.

“This is essentially an extremely expensive green-washing project,” said Andreas Randoy, an oil and gas campaigner for Greenpeace in Norway. But he also acknowledged that it was more understandable to use the process for cement than to use it for fossil fuels.

Oslo’s focus on using carbon capture to clean facilities like cement plants and incinerators has muted such criticism. “The discussion now is much more on what do you do with cement, what do you do with steel?” said Amund Vik, a former Norwegian deputy energy minister who is now a senior adviser at Eurasia Group, a political risk firm. “That is a very different conversation.”

Heidelberg says that when Brevik is up and running, it will reduce emissions by around half, or about 400,000 metric tons a year. That amount may seem like a big number, but it is a small portion of the 61 million tons that the company’s cement business produces. The project at the Brevik plant is the first of around a dozen efforts in various countries including Britain, Germany and the United States that will remove 10 million tons of carbon by 2030, the company said.

Some environmentally minded investors say they have warmed up to carbon capture, which, a few years ago, seemed too risky and expensive. A wave of announcements of projects and subsidies from European governments for reducing emissions has changed perceptions.

By taking these early steps, Heidelberg may even turn “the risk of CO2 into a real strength,” said Linus Vogel, an environmental, social and governance investment analyst at DekaBank, a financial firm in Frankfurt.

Explore Our Business and Tech Coverage

Dive deeper into the people, issues and trends shaping the worlds of business and technology.