Long-term behaviour of CO2 emissions from cement production in Spain: scenario analysis using an energy optimisation model

During the past decade, the Spanish cement production industry has experienced constant technological updates. Nevertheless, meeting current and future environmental policy goals requires extra efforts. The Spanish case is significant because cement production went down dramatically due to the last economic crisis. This brought an important, but temporary, reduction of CO2 emissions. Therefore, there is an interesting opportunity for cement producers and policymakers to adjust the long-term targets. This work discusses the evolution of the cement industry in Spain from a realistic point of view using recent cement demand projections and the TIMES-Spain energy optimisation model. Several environmental-friendly options were implemented in TIMES-Spain following a literature review. These measures, aimed at contributing to the decrease of emissions to meet the established policy goals, include energy efficiency improvements, substitution scenarios (both for fuel and materials) and CO2 capture (post-combustion and oxyfuel). From a policy approach, the deployment of the EU ETS Directive entails that CO2 emissions from cement production will decrease by 8 Mt per year from 2030 with respect to the case without Directive. In a more technology-specific analysis, a remarkable decrease of 2-2.4 Mt CO2 was obtained in the material substitution scenario beyond 2030. Additionally, taking into account current projections for cement demand, CO2 capture technology does not emerge as a feasible option. Only if cement demand grew back to the pre-crisis level by 2050 and the CO2 emission allowances remained fixed would the CO2 capture via post-combustion start to be a reasonable alternative.