Decarbonizing heavy industry may be the most wicked climate problem of them all. All six of our Key Results are failing, with little recent progress of note. They are a testament to the need for game-changing innovation to lower the costs of cleaner solutions and cut 10 gigatons of carbon emissions by 2050.
With steel, emissions are the product of the ultra-high industrial heat required to make it. While lower-carbon-intensity steel is being manufactured in China, it comes at too steep a green premium. With cement, where the problem derives from both heat and chemistry, the challenge is even more complex. To date, the world has built just one commercial-scale, zero-carbon facility for cement, and none at all for primary steel. To reach net zero, we need thousands for both.
As the world adds another two billion people over the next quarter-century, we’ll have to build more homes to house them and more commercial buildings as well. Without replacement materials that can bear as much load, we may need twice as much steel and cement as we require today. One stopgap is to focus on design efficiency and revised building codes. We can emit less by using less.