Challenges
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Landscape mapping
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Cement and concrete
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Sustainable materials
Client
The Clean Growth Fund (CGF)
Challenge
The Clean Growth Fund was looking to develop a deeper understanding of the cement sector and the role/potential for innovation to decarbonise the industry. CGF had wanted exposure to trends in global cement innovations, the landscape of UK innovations, and where investment opportunities lay in the cement/concrete value chain.
Solution
Cement, constituting 8% of global emissions, had necessitated scalable cleantech innovations that could align with global demand. To inform CGF, CLT had conducted desk research and stakeholder interviews, identifying six innovation categories:
- New materials for cement
- Lower-energy production methods
- Alternative building materials (e.g., cross-laminated timber)
- Property enhancements (chemical additives)
- Optimisation technology/digital solutions
- Circular solutions (e.g., process-specific CCUS)
A database of 72 innovations was analysed for economic validity, carbon abatement potential, and invasiveness against existing supply chains and regulatory structures. Attention had quickly centred on novel material innovations to replace Ordinary Portland Cement, which chemically breaks down into CO₂ during production, as well as lower-energy production methods which could eliminate use of an energy-intensive kiln for production.
Front-runners had arisen who addressed these challenges while complying with strict regulations for both concrete strength and chemistry. CLT had also identified adjacent innovations, like digital solutions, with lower adoption barriers and lower carbon savings potentials, but who could maintain relevance as the industry continued to foster an environment where innovations would help progress towards net zero.
Outcome
CLT had collated a database of 72 global innovators, categorising them based on six identified cement/concrete innovation categories, and documenting their financial history and likely carbon abatement potential should they scale up. CLT had gone deeper into the 16 identified UK innovators, mapping their solutions to the cement value chain, uncovering their short- and long-term carbon abatement potential within current economic and regulatory contexts. CLT had finally presented insights and a set of investment recommendations to CGF of the set of UK innovators.
