This news article was originally written in Spanish. It has been automatically translated for your convenience. Reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate translation, however, no automated translation is perfect nor is it intended to replace a human translator. The original article in Spanish can be viewed at El sector cementero invierte más de mil millones en mejoras ambientales en una década

This industry is at the head of Europe in energy efficiency

The cement sector invested over one billion on environmental improvements in a decade

Drafting Interempresas25/09/2009

September 25, 2009

During the last decade, Spanish cement companies have invested more than EUR 1 billion in the adaptation of their factories to the IPPC Directive (prevention and integrated control of pollution, its acronym in English), whose aim is to ensure the protection of the environment.

These figures demonstrate that this industry has acquired with the society through the improvement of its facilities in order to reduce the impact of the plants in their environment and commitment has materialized with the obtaining of integrated environmental authorisation granted by the corresponding autonomous community.

In particular, the average investment by factory in this period of time has been of 30.1 million euros, and total investment per ton of cement installed has been 25 euros per tonne. These items have been aimed at, among other improvements, reduce emissions, enhance energy recovery, install technological changes in the industries and improve the energy efficiency of plants, representing 63% of the total environmental improvements. In this sense, we can highlight the efforts made by the sector to install measurement systems in continuous particulate and NOx and SO₂ in 100% of the ovens meters. In addition, 99.5 per cent of the clinker transport facilities are closed and have systems of desempolvamiento.

The growth of the sector during the last ten years has allowed to carry out important reforms in factories, which places the industry to lead Europe in energy efficiency

Thus the growth of the sector during the last ten years has allowed to carry out important reforms in factories to adapt them to the best available techniques, which places the industry to lead Europe in energy efficiency.

Greener but less competitive

In addition to heavy investment, their costs have been increased by the cement companies to comply with this new legislation, mainly providing specialized personnel to meet the new technical and legal requirements, and assuming higher costs of operation of the equipment with lower emissions of pollutants. Thus, in 2007 the cement industry invested on average of 1.1 million euros by factory in 2007.

On the other hand, thanks to the voluntary agreement for the prevention and integrated Control of pollution in the cement industry, signed between the industry and the Ministry of the environment in 2001, both the sector such as administrations have come better prepared to face successfully the implementation of the IPPC and thusin 2008 all the cement factories have ISO 14001 certification.

All these investments decrease operating income and the competitiveness of the Spanish cement against the cement imported from outside the EU

Finally, it is important to note that the sum of all costs described above, both services, and staff, or the derivatives of investment and operation of the equipment set up, decrease operating income and the competitiveness of the Spanish cement against the cement imported from outside the EU, or made of clinker from outside the EU, which also has lower labour and energy costs. While not check equivalent measures of environmental protection at the international level, any expansion of environmental requirements in Europe should previously be analyzed in terms of costs and benefits associated, so that the competitiveness of the industry is not damaged if the benefits are not clear from the point of view of the environment as a whole with regard to other possible measures.

The growth of the sector during the last ten years has allowed to carry out major reforms in factories to adapt them to the best available techniques, which places the industry to lead Europe in energy efficiency.

Photo: Ramon Venne