Consequential life cycle assessment of Brazilian cement industry technology projections for 2050

Abstract

In the upcoming decades, cement production growth is expected to exceed the increase in availability of clinker substitutes. Increased clinker replacement rates in cement and use of alternatives fuels were pointed out as the main alternatives for reducing emissions of the national cement industry, whilst increasing cement production in 2050. Consequential life cycle assessment (CLCA) offers a framework to capture environmental consequences from demand alterations. Modelling the cement production and markets involved is however challenging, given conceptual (only unconstrained markets are considered) and practical modelling limitations (e.g. model granularity compatible with CLCA interests). This paper refers to an ongoing work and adopts a two-stage approach to discuss the effects of the change on the average cement production process in Brazil. We first performed a CLCA without formal affected market identification to estimate the potential environmental impacts of the technology change proposed in the Brazilian Cement Technology Roadmap. Secondly, we used a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) Model of the Brazilian economy to (more) realistically foresee short-term effects induced by such change. The CGE model comprises 102 economic activities, including cement production and its production chain. Our results indicate that (i) increasing the proportion of calcined clay and limestone filler as clinker partial substitutes and (ii) excluding charcoal from the fuel mix composition at the kiln would impact all economic sectors. Our preliminary findings suggest that the increased efficiency in cement production would create some rebound effect that would not invalidate the emission benefits from displacing energy and virgin materials. Additional impact categories and consequences in other economic sectors should be further investigated.

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“…Estimating the potential environmental impact of technology change and anticipating its effects (Gomes et al, 2019;Shim et al, 2019;Matani, 2019;Dooley, 2017).…”

The economic and environmental impacts of Brazilian National Biofuel Policy

“…30 The database used by the CGE model is the input-output tables known as a social accounting matrix, which reflects the interactions of buying and selling between sectors of the economy and the final demand in monetary values. 31 In this paper a model structure similar to the one used in Machado et al 22 and Gomes et al 32 was applied, with a focus on the fuel sectors (particularly ethanol, gasoline, biodiesel and diesel) that are directly affected by RenovaBio. Despite the different subjects analyzed in both studies, the functions chosen to describe the producers' and consumers' behaviors are similar to the behavioral equations chosen for this paper.…”

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“…The database used in the CGE model refers to the Brazilian National Accounts [8] for the baseline year (2014). An input-output matrix estimated from the national accounts data using the method proposed by [9].…”

“…Our baseline is the production system in 2014, modified by incorporating fuel mix and cement composition projected by the Roadmap BR for 2050. The computable general equilibrium (CGE) model was improved and further disaggregated relatively to a previous exploratory study [8], to improve the economic insights provided.…”

“…that a technological change from one single sector has on the output level of all other sectors of a given economy. Figure2represents a simplified structure (considering an economy with only two sectors) of the CGE model used in this paper, originally presented by[8].ENTAC2022 -Ambiente Construído: Resiliente e…”