Leadership Spotlight: Ian Riley, CEO of the World Cement Association and Partner, Whitewater TX

SSC Leadership Spotlight: Ian Riley, CEO of World Cement Association, and Partner at WhitewaterTx

 This interview is part of a series of blog posts highlighting prominent members of the Smart Surfaces Coalition team. Over the coming months, we will publish interviews with Coalition Steering Committee members as they talk about their work, our environment and the Smart Surfaces mission.

This interview was conducted by Ivy Moore (IM), Digital Media and Communications Intern at Smart Surfaces Coalition.

IM: To get started, I’m going to start with the basics. What is the difference between concrete and cement?

IR: Good place to start. Concrete is the product that people and contractors buy. Concrete is made up of cement, sand, aggregates, water and usually chemical additives. Cement is a raw material that goes into concrete. Now, from the standpoint of climate, the part that has the heavy carbon footprint is the cement. The carbon footprint of concrete almost all comes from cement. Aggregates, sand, water and transportation of the concrete have a quite minor footprint by comparison. Cement comes from clinker milled together with other cementitious materials. It is clinker that causes the vast majority of the cement CO2 emissions. If we look at how to reduce the CO2 in concrete, most solutions lead to reduced clinker usage.

IM: Cement accounts for roughly 7% of total global CO2 emissions. How do you address this large statistic as CEO of WCA?

IR: The cement industry has been looking at this for more than 20 years now. In 2000, 10 of the largest international cement company CEOs made a commitment to do more than the legal requirement on key emissions from cement plants —dust, SO2, NOx and CO2. At the time, there were no CO2 regulations.

 More recently, of course, the focus has been very heavily on CO2. CO2 from the cement industry standpoint is the most difficult of those emissions to reduce. This is because the main raw material in cement is limestone, and when you put limestone in a kiln it breaks down into calcium oxide and CO2, producing clinker.

 The CO2 per ton of cement has been reduced by over 20% in the last 20 years though. Three main strategies that have achieved this are: improving energy efficiency, replacing coal with lower carbon fuels and reducing the proportion of clinker in cement.

IM: What does full decarbonization of the cement industry specifically look like? What is needed for net zero?

IR: First of all, in order to decarbonize concrete we need to keep working on new technologies. There are several promising technologies, but they're at quite an early stage. Most of these technologies are being developed in North America or Europe, but to decarbonize the industry, they will need to be deployed globally. Many of these technologies absorb CO2 emitted from cement production or other sources and store it permanently in concrete. There is plenty of funding for these technologies in developed economies, but in developing countries it's much harder to get startup funding.

 It is clear that we will need adaptation as well as mitigation. If you look at the 1.2oC degrees warming that is already here today, you can see the impact that's already having. Whether it is increased rainfall from heavier storms, increased Dust Bowl effects, colder weather in the winter, hotter weather in the summer. We are seeing this all over the world. Mitigation is already needed. In the UK we already see the impact on water systems and flooding, even though we are one of the least affected countries. A lot of the actions to become more resilient against storms and rising sea levels require concrete.

IM: Why is working with the Smart Surfaces Coalition important to you? And how can concrete solutions apply to Smart Surfaces? 

IR: There are really two issues that the Smart Surfaces Coalition is looking at. One is the urban heat island effect, and one is drainage or flood control. These are things that the cement and concrete industry knows how to do even with existing technology. The cumulative effect of addressing these issues is pretty significant. Smart Surfaces Coalition is helping to deploy existing technology in a smarter way.

 The solution to reducing CO2 emissions will be found in collaboration along the supply chain. It requires working together at a much earlier stage. I think Smart Surfaces are an interesting catalyst.

IM: The WCA Annual Conference happened just last month, can you share the biggest takeaways from that event?

IR: One of the themes, which is not new but which is the first time I've heard much about it at a cement conference, was climate justice. I know this is something that Smart Surfaces has been thinking about a lot. In the Smart Surfaces context, you're thinking about climate justice primarily within a city—the difference between the richer and the poorer neighborhoods and how they're unequally impacted by heat islands.

 Conversations around climate justice at the conference were at a country level. I think this is probably something we can expect to hear at COP in Glasgow, perhaps we can actually get to a point where the promised USD100 billion of aid from developed to developing countries is really being delivered. There's a general need for developed countries to provide financing and technology to developing countries to help them cope with, and adapt to climate change.

IM: COP26 is happening this month. Are you attending and what is your desired outcome and what are you hoping to see happen?

IR: Yes, I am attending. There are things to be optimistic about, and things that make you less optimistic. If I look at the cement industry, I can see initiatives that can lead us to a much lower carbon footprint and perhaps even a zero or a negative carbon future. But if I look at the overall energy consumption or overall CO2 emissions, it is hard to see any progress. We can’t yet see the impact of all the efforts on climate action showing up yet in terms of the total emissions.

IM: What gives you hope?

IR: I'm reasonably optimistic. What got us here is a particular economic system. In the book ‘Sapiens’, Harari states that Homo Sapiens’ ability to communicate imaginary things gave us an evolutionary advantage. He points out there are many things that have no reality other than the fact that we believe in them, such as laws, money, and the corporation. He illustrates how these are all basically figments of our imagination, but they have got us where we are.

 So the point is that the system is not immutable. We are where we are because of a system we created: we can therefore create different systems that will get us somewhere else. That's what we're going to have to do. We have to create incentives that will cause people, companies and governments to behave in a way that gets us to a low carbon future. It's not beyond the wit of humans to do. So, that's what gives me hope. Whether we can do it quickly enough to avoid serious consequences is perhaps another question.