Green transition pathways for cement industry in China

Abstract Cement industry is regarded as one of the most energy-intensive sectors, which generates large amount of greenhouse gas and pollutant emissions. Therefore, the realization of green development of cement industry is of great significance. A bottom-up National Energy Technology-Cement (NET-Cement) Model is developed for optimizing the green transition pathway of the cement industry. Based on China's empirical background, this study comprehensively evaluates the potentials of energy saving and emission reduction of four types of green transition measures, including improving energy efficiency, switching to alternative fuels, using alternative raw materials and implementing Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) on the basis of meeting the demand of future cement products. The results show that simultaneous implementation of the above four measures would reach approximately 30.69% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050 compared with the situation following the existing policies. The corresponding average emission abatement cost will be 183.12 CNY/tCO2. Regarding the energy saving and emission reduction effect of a single measure, improving energy efficiency (AT scenario) contributes the most energy saving (9 Mtce) and has a 3.04% emission reduction rate in 2050. Using calcium carbide as alternative raw materials has the lowest average abatement cost being 63.03 CNY/tCO2 in 2050. Pollutants such as SO2, NOX, PM2.5, smoke dust and fine dust can be largely reduced as well.