Energy conservation measures for the German cement industry and their ability to compensate for rising energy-related production costs

Cement is a bulk commodity that is correlated with the population growth. While the world-wide sales are continuously increasing, the demand for cement in Germany is stagnating. Nevertheless, cement production accounts for 3.8% of Germany's industrial final energy consumption and 2.9% of Germany's total CO2 emissions in 2012. We assessed the energy conservation and CO2 abatement potential of 21 identified measures by deriving fuel, electricity conservation and CO2 abatement cost curves. In our bottom-up investigation, we account for the current efficiency of plants and use two different system boundaries: a process boundary for benchmarking measures and a facility boundary for calculating the total potential. We identified economical conservation and abatement potentials for the year 2013 of 4% for fuel, 0.7% for electricity and 3.4% fuel and process-related CO2 emissions in relation to 2012. The results of the subsequent sensitivity analysis showed that electricity conservation measures in cement grinding can compensate for higher electricity prices in the amount of the German electricity tax. In contrast, the sector's energy-related productions costs showed a high sensitivity against rising CO2 prices. Without radical process innovations such as low carbon cements, CO2 prices until 2035 accounted in average for more than 40% of the gross value-added which indicates, according to the EU ETS directive, the carbon leakage risk of the cement sector. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.