LafargeHolcim – the parent company of Aggregate Industries – does like to talk.
The company claims "LafargeHolcim is at the forefront of efforts to mitigate climate change", but in 2018, its gross CO2 emissions increased to 135,000,000 tonnes, UP from 131,000,000 tonnes in 2017, UP from 127,000,000 tonnes in 2016. Total indirect CO2 emissions added another 30,000,000 tonnes.
But wait. What’s this? A breakthrough in science??
"Concrete has lower C02 intensity than any other building materials." @Jamie_Gentoso, CEO US Cement, represented us at the last @Bloomberg #SustainableBizSummit. Before her speech, she said a few words about the decarbonization of the built environment.#LHLowCarbonTransition pic.twitter.com/JIXV2XWRqz— LafargeHolcim (@LafargeHolcim) October 30, 2019
We have posted about the company's CO2 intensity in LafargeHolcim has a way with numbers – CO2 emission numbers and ‘It’s critical we stop extractive industries greenwashing their crimes’, how:
Mining corporations are aggressively and cynically marketing their destructive activity as a solution to the climate emergency.
The claims by LafargeHolcim's US CEO in the video above will surely come as a surprise to many – including the person who wrote this BBC article: The massive CO2 emitter you may not know about:
In 2016, world cement production generated around 2.2 billion tonnes of CO2 - equivalent to 8% of the global total.
But according to the claims in LafargeHolcim's video:
"We’ve done a lot of great research with MIT to show that concrete has lower CO2 intensity than any other building materials"
Wow. That’s quite a claim.
What does MIT say? According to this article from MIT – extolling the merits of engineered wood for construction – the CO2 intensity of timber products is "under 25 percent that of cement":
Comparing the economic and emissions impacts of replacing CO2-intensive building materials (e.g. steel and concrete) with lumber products in the U.S. under an economy-wide cap-and-trade policy consistent with the nation’s Paris Agreement GHG emissions reduction pledge, the study found that the CO2-intensity (tons of CO2 emissions per dollar of output) of lumber production is about 20 percent less than that of fabricated metal products, under 50 percent that of iron and steel, and under 25 percent that of cement.
So, goodness, who do you believe? A cement company desperate to sell as much of its polluting product as possible, despite the climate emergency, or one of the world’s top universities?
