Replacing Portland cement with pozzolans - the only way in which meaningful reduction in CO2 emissions can be achieved

In March 2002, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development issued a report entitled “Towards a Sustainable Cement Industry”. The Climate Change Section of the WBCSD report identifies the principal areas that the cement industry must follow if it wants to achieve sustainability. Those areas are:

1. Expanding sales of cement with lower clinker content (e.g. composite cement with fly ash or blast furnace slag).
2. Increasing the use of alternative fuels (bio-based, low carbon, or waste fuels that provide a net carbon dioxide emissions reduction).
3. Initiating energy efficiency enhancements (improving equipment and phasing out inefficient plants.
4. Committing itself to innovation.

The report goes on to state that "without a commitment to long-term innovation, the industry will likely find itself facing growing emission liabilities as individual nations commit themselves to ever-tighter CO2 constraints in an attempt to stabilize atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases".

EMC agrees with this assessment and has been working for the past 12 years to offer a technology that will achieve this objective.

As the attached data demonstrates, EMC has resolved the strength development challenges and is pleased to confirm that it has also resolved all of the other four critical criteria mentioned above.

It is stressed that these products are all the result of a cost efficient and environmentally friendly grinding process, not expensive and harmful processes or admixtures.

For example:

• The grinding process does not emit pollutants into the air or into water.
• There is essentially no waste material.
• The grinding takes place in an enclosed process with the required dust protection features.
• Energy consumption ranges from 30-50 kWh per ton product.
• An EMC plant producing some 150,000 tons per annum can be operated by about 12 people in total.

For comparison, the grinding of EMC products costs less and with less environmental impact than that of grinding Portland clinker into Portland cement.

It is also important to note that the EMC production process is not based on superfine grinding; indeed, EMC cements have only about 25% increase in fineness. Moreover, workability and finishability are improved.

The environmental potential in a global adoption of the EMC technology

While statistics vary, EMC’s view is that the cement industry produces about 8% of global CO2 emissions and that at the present rate this will exceed 10% by 2010.These emissions are not only disproportionate to the contribution of the industry to the world GDP; over half of them are unjustified from a technological and economical point of view.

In the event that the EMC technology would be adopted world wide, global CO2 emissions would reduce by about 5% or equal to the global goal of the Kyoto Protocol.

These are compelling numbers!

The importance of the environmental profile is increasingly recognized

From the news media one could get the impression that the environmental activity focus mostly on the squabbles between the European Union and the US over the Kyoto Protocol and that the US is doing nothing about the matter.

Reality is entirely different!

Companies, regardless of the nature of their business, are increasingly recognizing that sustainability is part of good corporate governance.

Municipal and regional governments and even private enterprises are increasingly introducing environmental criteria or “green construction” as a competitive element in awarding construction contracts.

Investors are increasingly applying environmental criteria as part of their investment analyses.

Indeed, sustainable and environmental policies are simply becoming part of good corporate governance analyses.