The Challenge
- The California Nevada Cement Association (CNCA), an industry association representing the cement industry in California and Nevada, identified a need for the industry to develop a forward leaning roadmap to proactively engage California regulators, policymakers, and other stakeholders as part of the state’s ongoing climate and emissions reduction goals.
- The cement industry faces a unique set of challenges: it is notoriously difficult to decarbonize and essential to economic development. CNCA understood that maintaining a competitive and sustainable California cement industry would require articulating an ambitious yet feasible path to reaching carbon neutrality by 2045.
- Achieving this ambitious goal will require unlocking a flexible “all-of-the-above” approach to decarbonization and eliminating barriers to various decarbonization approaches, which in turn hinges on informing and winning support from a diverse set of stakeholders.
Our Solution
Working closely with the client and industry experts, Keybridge developed a technically and economically feasible roadmap to carbon neutrality for the cement industry, based on detailed industry interviews, in-depth research, and quantitative modeling.
- Nine Levers: Lifecycle cement industry emissions can be reduced to zero by unlocking nine key decarbonization levers — each with their own unique opportunities, barriers, and policy recommendations — to induce industry investment.
- Three Pathways: These levers support three overarching pathways for addressing the industry’s emissions: (1) reducing process emissions, the unavoidable byproduct of the chemical reaction used to create cement; (2) reducing emissions from fossil fuel combustion; and (3) reducing indirect emissions from electricity consumption.
- One Goal: Working closely with CNCA and a third-party communications and PR firm, we packaged our research and analysis into a detailed technical report and policy document that lays out the challenges, opportunities, and technical considerations related to reducing cement industry emissions, and ensured that they were accessible to both expert and lay audiences.
End Results
The groundbreaking report Achieving Carbon Neutrality in the California Cement Industry: Key Barriers & Policy Solutions, the first of its kind by U.S. cement producers, has advanced CNCA goals in several ways.
- The report formed the basis of all subsequent industry engagement with regulatory stakeholders and policymakers.
- It created a common language and understanding of the cement industry’s unique challenges among stakeholders and policymakers in California that has established the industry as a forward-leaning and constructive player in California climate policy.
- Keybridge’s efforts directly informed landmark legislation (California Senate Bill 596) that codified the approach to industry decarbonization outlined in our report.
