PCA Companies Awarded More Than $1 Billion to Fund Major Decarbonization Projects

Earlier this week, the U.S. Department of Energy announced potentially more than $1.2 billion in funding for four Portland Cement Association (PCA) member companies to launch decarbonization projects. The funding is from the Biden Administration’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

“This funding is a welcome acknowledgement from the government that America’s cement manufacturers are taking ambitious and significant steps toward reaching carbon neutrality,” said Mike Ireland, PCA president and CEO. “This will move the needle closer to achieving what industry considers the ‘heavyweight’ of carbon solutions: Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage (CCUS). Once established nationwide, CCUS will greatly accelerate cement manufacturers’ charge toward net zero.”

The PCA companies were:
Heidelberg Materials US, Inc., also an NRMCA member company, awarded up to $500 million - The Mitchell Cement Plant Decarbonization Project intends to build and operate an integrated carbon capture, transport and storage system at Heidelberg’s newly modernized plant in Mitchell, IN. This project would capture at least 95% of the carbon dioxide from one of the largest cement plants in the nation and store it in a geologic formation beneath the plant property. This project expects to prevent 2 million tons of carbon dioxide per year from entering the atmosphere and would demonstrate a pathway to decarbonize existing cement plants in the U.S.

National Cement Company of California, Inc. awarded up to $500 million - The Lebec Net Zero Cement Plant Project plans to produce carbon-neutral cement at the Lebec, CA, plant. Instead of fossil fuels, the project would use locally sourced biomass from agricultural byproducts such as pistachio shells; replace clinker with a less carbon intensive alternative (calcined clay) to produce limestone calcined clay cement; and capture and sequester the plant’s remaining approximately 950,000 metric tons of CO2 each year.

Summit Materials, Inc., also an NRMCA member company, awarded up to $215.6 million - The Low-Carbon Calcined Clay Cement Demonstration Project is slated to build four new calcination facilities in Maryland, Georgia and Texas. It would demonstrate the viability of displacing high-emitting limestone-based cement with a clay-based product in multiple geographies. This project’s range of sites builds the case for this demonstration’s replicability, given that clay sources and availability of cementitious products around the country are highly diverse. The scale has the potential to prevent 1.1 million metric tons of CO2 emissions per year.

Roanoke Cement Company, also an NRMCA member company, awarded $61.7 million - The Limestone Calcined Clay Cement Production Project will take place at Roanoke’s Troutville, VA, plant and will demonstrate the ability to utilize widely available clay types to minimize the most carbon-intensive component in cement. The project will also help validate the market for calcined clays in a region with high demand for the material while reducing the carbon intensity by an estimated 83%.

For more information, contact PCA's Remi Barden at rbarden@cement.org.