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Aside from water, concrete is the most-used material in the world, with about 14 billion cubic metres being used every year, writes Professor Jamie Goggins, University of Galway. Of that, 40% of that is used to build places for people to live.

If you were to pour that amount of concrete to make a paving slab ten centimetres thick, it would cover all of England and about half of Wales. In the US, the same amount would cover the state of New York.

But concrete production releases carbon dioxide (CO₂), one of the greenhouse gases that drives climate change. About 90% of emissions associated with concrete come from the production of Portland cement – this fine grey powder, the part that binds concrete ingredients together, was named after its resemblence to stone from the Isle of Portland, Dorset. Portland cement accounts for 7%-8% of the world’s direct CO₂ emissions. 

A new first-ot-its-kind green cement plant in Redding, California, has 70% lower emissions than conventional cement production. Image: Fortera, CC BY-ND.

Production of a more sustainable and cost-effective low-carbon cement, often nicknamed 'green' cement, is scaling up. A new plant next to an existing cement plant in Redding, California, will produce about 15,000 tonnes of low-carbon cement every year. This could be used to make about 50,000 cubic metres of concrete, which is less than 0.0004% of the world’s concrete production. 

At Redding, materials technology company Fortera turns CO₂ captured during conventional cement production into ready-to-use green cement, a form of calcium carbonate. This could reduce carbon emissions of cement by 70% on a tonne-for-tonne basis, according to Fortera.

A concrete issue

People have been using concrete for more than 2,000 years, by blending gravel, sand, cement, water and, sometimes, synthetic chemicals. It is used to create everything from paths and bridges to buildings and pipes.

Currently, the EU uses more than two tonnes of concrete per person per year – 325kg of that is cement. That is equivalent to the amount of food the average European person eats in five months.

Cement production is an energy-intensive process and the greenhouse gas emissions are hard to cut. When limestone is heated in a kiln, often fuelled by coal, nearly half that limestone is lost as CO₂ emissions.

This happens because limestone (calcium carbonate) breaks down in heat to form clinker, a mix of calcium oxide and CO₂. For every tonne of ordinary Portland cement made, 0.6-0.9 tonnes of CO₂ are released into the atmosphere.

So many industries rely on this material. The main challenge facing the cement industry is reducing CO₂ emissions at the same time as meeting global demand.

So as well as developing new technologies, low-carbon cement production must be established on a global scale to meet infrastructural needs required of economically developing nations.

Low-carbon alternatives

Other ways to reduce the carbon footprint of concrete include using fly ash (a byproduct from burning coal in power plants) or slag (a byproduct from steel production) to partially replace Portland cement.

However, sources of these materials will reduce as other industries decarbonise. Over time, less iron ore will be used to produce steel as more steel is produced from recycling existing steel, so there will be less available slag.

Current strategies for decarbonising cement and concrete rely heavily on using carbon capture and storage technology to capture unavoidable process emissions from cement plants.

So low-carbon cement production does not have to involve replacing every cement production plant in operation. Low-carbon cement facilities can be retrofitted to capture CO₂ emissions released from manufacturing conventional cement. Plants can also use that captured CO₂ within the cement that they are producing or as a product for the food and chemical industries.

In Norway, Heidelberg Materials are building an industrial-scale carbon capture and storage plant at a cement facility that could capture and store an estimated 400,000 tonnes of CO₂ per year – that is half the existing plant’s emissions.

However, this technology has a high investment cost for cement producers. Captured CO₂ can be stored underground, but this requires specific geological characteristics that aren’t guaranteed at cement production sites.

Greenhouse gas emissions in the cement sector are regulated by the EU’s emissions trading system. This was established to make polluters pay for their greenhouse gas emissions, reduce emissions and generate revenues to finance the green transition.

This legislation has not significantly reduced carbon emissions in the cement sector over the past decade, according to the International Energy Agency, mainly due to free emissions allowances being granted to cement manufacturers.

Despite sustained healthy profits in the cement industry, there has not been enough investment in the widespread uptake of cleaner technologies and the sustainable use of materials. Greater financial incentives could help whereby companies have to pay for emissions associated with the production of cement. 

Fortera is the only company directly capturing carbon emissions from cement production to make a pure low-carbon cement binder like this. Image: Fortera, CC BY-ND.

As a design engineer, I appreciate that material choice and good design play a significant role in the sustainability credentials of construction. Before low-carbon cement technology becomes more widespread, engineers, designers and builders can use construction materials more efficiently and choose products with lower embodied carbon – that is carbon emissions released during the life cycle of building materials, from extraction through to disposal.

This approach could easily save 20% in embodied emissions associated with new building design.

Some governments could move towards only permitting the use of low-carbon cement. In Ireland, the Climate Action Plan 2024 requires that low-carbon construction methods and low-carbon cement are specified where possible for government-procured or government-supported construction projects.

Could all cement in the future be low-carbon or 'green'? How 'low-carbon' is defined will play a very important part in how this is translated into practice in the industry.

Retrofitting technology to large-scale existing cement production plants will prove that it is technically possible to produce low-carbon cement efficiently at scale. With the right incentives in place by governments and the construction sector, almost all cement produced around the world could be low-carbon. 

Author: Jamie Goggins, professor of civil engineering, College of Science and Engineering, University of Galway. This article first appeared in The Conversation.

1. HEATCHECK is a platform developed through funding from the Sustainable Energy Association of Ireland (SEAI), which uses sensors to monitor CO₂, humidity and temperature in about 100 LDA developed homes to understand building performance and behaviour when occupied. The data will help to inform future building standards to ensure healthy, low energy homes.
2. INDICATE is a Carbon Life Cycle Assessment Procedure offering a standardised approach to calculating the carbon associated with the production, construction, operation and end-of-life stages of a building life cycle. It benchmarks the carbon associated with different building types in Ireland (residential, offices, hospitals etc) which the LDA uses to understand and minimise the carbon impact of their developments and support the development of policy recommendations.
3. The LDA is partnering with the Irish Green Building Council (IGBC) on a project to mainstream biodiversity in the construction sector by developing high-quality, practical case studies on how to protect and enhance biodiversity in the most common building typologies and infrastructure found in Irish towns and cities. It is supported through the first Construct Innovate Seed Fund call from 2023.

The LDA is a member of the IGBC’s Community of Practice on Biodiversity and the Built Environment, which Minister of State for Heritage and Electoral Reform Malcom Noonan T.D. launched in May 2023 to share and promote discussion and what is working well in Biodiversity and the Built Environment.

EnergyPROSPECTS (PROactive Strategies and Policies for Energy Citizenship Transformation) is a University of Galway led project that aims to develop an innovative conceptual framework to better understand energy citizenship in Europe. Energy citizenship is a means by which citizens can actively participate in energy systems and positively impact a transition to renewable energy sources.  

Funded under the EU Horizon 2020 programme, the project consortium includes nine research partners (universities, research institutes, enterprises and NGOs) from Ireland, Belgium, Hungary, Netherlands, Bulgaria, France, Latvia, Germany and Spain. Professor Frances Fahy of Galway is the project lead. EnergyPROSPECTS is a three-year project that began in May 2021 and is scheduled for completion at the end of April 2024.

The project findings were formally unveiled at a special event in Brussels on March 5, 2024. The launch took place in conjunction with sister projects, DIALOGUES, EC2 and ENCLUDE. 

As part of EnergyPROSPECTS, methodology was developed for pursuing the overall project aim of identifying the diverse types of energy citizenship. The methodology was created to help answer the following research questions:

1. Which forms of energy citizenship can be found in Europe today? How can we account for their diversity?
2. Do we find the same forms in different regions/countries of Europe?
3. In what contexts do different forms of energy citizenship emerge and develop?

The project findings manifest in several deliverables which highlight a growing culture of energy citizenship in Europe. The project results are evident in the following:

• Publication of a Factsheet Series and Country Profiles;
• The project identified and examined a range of cross-cutting issues in energy citizenship, creating a database of 596 cases of energy citizenship from across Europe. The database is presented as an interactive map that shows the scope of energy citizenship in Europe;
• A total of 40 cases from this database were selected for in-depth analysis exploring development, evaluation, intermediaries, institutions, governance, and ICT in energy systems. This analysis is evident across a range of project specific publications;
• Using a multi-actor perspective, an empowerment toolkit for practitioners and citizens was developed;
• The project conducted a citizen survey of more than 10,000 people from across Europe, with a view of appraising the validity of various energy related scenarios.

This article will reflect on some of the cases from Ireland that were subject to in-depth analysis and will present insights for future practitioners, new business, and service models.

What is energy citizenship?

But to begin, what is energy citizenship and why does it matter?

While the term energy citizenship does not yet appear to be used widely in public discourse across Europe, within the policy arena energy citizenship is often referenced in connection to energy prosumerism and energy communities.

EnergyPROSPECTS broadens this association to include further forms of individual and collective engagement with the energy system. This can include using energy-saving appliances, opting for renewable energy solutions, using electric vehicles, and participating in public political processes, such as climate change demonstrations.

In summary, many people engage in some form of energy citizenship, even if they are not aware of it. Energy citizenship is a means by which people can consciously or unconsciously be active participates in energy systems.

This is crucial as it reframes the portrayal of citizens as passive recipients of the energy transition and realigns them as active initiators (Kambli and Thalberg, 2023).

Energy citizenship in Europe

EnergyPROSPECTS documented the active roles citizens play in energy systems across Europe by creating a database that showcases 596 cases of individual and collective energy citizenship.

These cases are evident in an interactive map which capture the diversity of energy citizenship in Europe rather than to map each and every example that exists.

Since a huge variety of cases and initiatives exist that would meet the project’s definition, the project consortium decided that the energy citizenship mapping activity would cover and investigate cases that:

• Are based in European countries (including EU, EEA and accession countries);
• Are currently active or were concluded no earlier than 2015 when the Energy Union Strategy was published;
• Are focused on direct energy production and/or consumption (eg, involving households, organisations, etc), mobility (with a direct connection to energy issues), or those which have a more holistic focus on sustainable and just energy.

Energy citizenship in Ireland

The EnergyPROSPECTS interactive map includes 20 cases from Ireland. These cases include examples of individual energy citizenship, such as Lorna Gold (author, lecturer, and climate activist) and Paul Kenny (former CEO of the Tipperary Energy Agency), and collective energy citizenship, such as the Dublin Cycling Campaign and Ringsend Irishtown Sustainable Energy Community (RISEC).

Alongside mapping these 20 cases, EnergyPROSPECTS selected five cases from Ireland for in-depth analysis by University of Galway researchers Prof Fahy and Dr Benjamin Schmid. The cases are:

• Aran Islands Energy Cooperative (Comharchumann Fuinnimh Oileáin Árann, CFOAT);
• Citizens’ Assembly on 'How the state can make Ireland a leader in tackling climate change';
• EirGrid Public Consultation: Shaping Our Electricity Future;
• Energy Community Tipperary Cooperative (ECTC);
• Galway Energy Co-operative.

Dr Schmid notes that in recent years, energy citizenship in Ireland has evolved from "an expansion of energy citizenship from the private dimension, where it is about empowerment in one’s own energy practices, to a public dimension, where citizenship takes the form of sharing in self-government".

This expansion is evident in all Irish cases of energy citizenship subject to in-depth analysis, but a close look at two examples, CFOAT and ECTC, illustrate the scope of this expansion. Importantly, these two cases also illustrate a shift from individual to collective agency, and why this shift matters for communities.

Aran Islands Energy Cooperative (Comharchumann Fuinnimh Oileáin Árann)

CFOAT is a civil society organisation that brings together the residents of the three Aran Islands, Inis Mór, Inis Meáin and Inis Oírr, with a view of becoming self-sufficient in clean, locally owned energy and to help build the local economy of the islands.

CFOAT was created in 2012 out of an initiative of existing local development organisations. At the beginning especially, it relied on funding for community retrofit measures and construction of photovoltaics systems for households on the islands within Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI) programmes and EU projects.

Founded in 2002, SEAI is a state-funded agency that provides policy advice and programme implementation (SEAI, 2018). It also established the Sustainable Energy Communities (SEC) model, which is defined as “partnerships between public, private and community sectors whose goal is centred on renewable energy or energy efficiency” (Hannoset et al. 2019).

Dr Schmid highlights that "SEAI has also launched the SEC network to address and promote energy citizens within this community framework. In 2021, there were more than 600 SECs across the country, while SEAI’s goal is to establish 1,500 SECs by 2030, which would correspond to the number of all municipalities in Ireland".

For CFOAT, their engagement with such models is, of course, a significant benefit in terms of energy citizenship. Yet, it is also a means to an end for various "overarching community goals, such as creating jobs, stabilising the population on the islands, preserving the language and culture and the beauty of the natural environment, but also improving comfort in homes" (ibid.)

In short, CFOAT as an active energy citizenship collective is not only a means to assure clean, locally owned energy, but also a way to assure socioeconomic improvements on the islands.

Energy Community Tipperary Cooperative (ECTC)

ECTC is also an example of an active energy citizenship collective that brings together communities, this time in the Tipperary region. ECTC aims to enable communities in Co Tipperary and surrounding areas to create local employment while also reducing their carbon footprints and generating community-owned energy.

Originating in 2014 with four communities collaborating on energy efficiency projects, the initiative has evolved into a formalised cooperative with 15 communities. ECTC’s mission is to leverage funding from the SEAI and provide a ‘One Stop Shop service which takes the hassle out of getting grant aid, sourcing contractors and overseeing projects for the homeowners’ (ECTC).

As with CFOAT, ECTC actively promote a more democratic and self-sufficient local energy system. Consequently, the ‘cooperative actively engages communities to raise energy awareness, promote local employment, and tackle energy poverty, with citizens retaining control through voting’ (Kambli and Thalberg, 2023).

Summary

The research conducted by EnergyPROSPECTS reveal that in Ireland, and indeed throughout Europe, opportunities for private, community and public participation in the energy system exist and are already being embraced.

The project shows that energy citizenship is a term that most people may not be overfamiliar with, nonetheless, as a practice it is a means by which individuals and collectives can positively impact the energy system, actively shape the energy transition and enable socioeconomic advancement for local communities.   

The full programme of events for Family Fun Day is available at www.universityofgalway.ie/engineersweek/. 

Tickets are free, and they can be booked for some shows in advance through the website. Families are also advised that they can turn up on the day, on a first come, first served, basis.

The test foil was designed by the team at ORPC Ireland and manufactured from a high-performance carbon fibre reinforced polymer by ÉireComposites, which are leading the CRIMSON Project, and incorporates recycled carbon-fibre material from Mitsubishi Chemical Advanced Materials, Germany.

The next phase of the project will trial the complete turbine in operational conditions at Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche’s large towing tank in Rome, Italy.