Quantifying the impacts of decarbonisation in China’s cement sector: A perspective from an integrated assessment approach

Abstract

China has been the world’s largest cement producer and the cement production has led to increased energy consumption and CO2 emissions, which greatly affect the country’s social and economic development. In this paper, an integrated assessment framework was developed by combining the Stock-based model and the Integrated MARKAL–EFOM System model of China (China TIMES), and it was used in China’s cement sector to simulate the trends of energy consumption and CO2 emissions during 2010–2050, under a reference scenario and three carbon tax scenarios. The modeling results show that: (1) the cement production in China will increase from 1.8 billion tons in 2010, to a peak of 2.5 billion tons in around 2017, and then gradually decrease to 1.5 billion tons in 2050; (2) Through the adoption of three alternative abatement measures (i.e., switching the fuel types, implementing the energy-efficient measures and CCS), China’s cement sector could potentially achieve a great reduction in CO2 emissions; (3) In the near future, the cement sector’s decarbonisation will mainly rely on energy efficiency improvement; while the use of alternative fuel use and CCS will be of great significance from a long-term perspective. Additionally, based on the modeling results, we build the energy-saving and emission-reduction technologies roadmap for China’s cement sector.