Calera is back in the news with it’s CO2 eating cement made by reacting stack emissions with a magnesium salt rich water solution. The San Francisco Chronical is reporting on his pilot plant and California and the fact that Constantz has managed to get himself invited to speak about Calera to the World of Concrete trade show in Las Vegas next February. They quote a spokesman from The Sierra Club declaring the technology “a game changer”.
We wrote about Calera before in our “Magic Pixie Dust” post, a term taken from one of the critics of the technology. At BGE we don’t know if Calera is engaging in science, magic or fraud but we do know this kind of publicity and attention is “game changing” at the end of the day.
This is mainstream press in a large, environmentally sensitive market. Whatever it is that Calera is producing, game changing or not, you can bet the political pressure will be turned up to legitimize it. Further, every article about Calera “educates” the public further about the CO2 costs of cement, and turns up the heat on the government to mandate cleaner production.
Cement is certainly one of the most important building materials in the world and is critical to continued economic development, however cement is going to have a CO2 image problem in a hurry. The green benefits of concrete construction need to be better understood by the public and better articulated by the industry.In addition, the industry has to show that it is genuinely interested in investing in technology that will reduce or sequester CO2 emissions, and that it is not content to wait until it is regulated to do so.
Technology is available today to reduce plant emissions, without resorting to magic. BGE can help every producers find the right technologies to apply to their facilities to make a real difference.