Hanson to build UK's first net-zero cement plant

Hanson UK (HeidelbergCement) plans to build the UK’s first net-zero cement factory at a facility in north Wales. Hanson is aiming to capture up to 800,000t of CO₂ per year at its cement plant in Padeswood, near Mold. The site is set to undergo a GBP400m upgrade to implement carbon-capture technology in the coming years.

Hanson’s Head of Process and Sustainability, Iain Walpole, said the upgraded plant would be able to combine low-carbon cement with carbon capture to ensure zero-net emissions from its production. He said: "The whole concept of the Padeswood project was to make net-zero cement. So almost every little bit of calculation we've done, we have asked ourselves 'what does that do to the net-zero balance?'

"If you replace the [Portland] cement component with ground granulated blastfurnace slag (GGBS), which is a low-carbon cement], then obviously that brings the CO₂ per cubic metre of concrete down; this project is making the bit that is left behind net-zero."

Hanson aims to utilise the low-carbon qualities of GGBS, which can cut up to 90 per cent of carbon emissions, while also ensuring that the remaining 9-10 per cent is eliminated.

The Padeswood site will tap into a now-depleted gas reserve in the Irish Sea to store the captured CO₂ emissions. The location of Padeswood, near the HyNet pipeline that connects the gas fields off the Liverpool coast, makes it uniquely able to capture and store carbon without the need for a large amount of additional infrastructure.

Mr Walpole said: "Basically, all the CO₂ we get from our plants will go down about an 8km pipeline from a plant to the main [HyNet] line. And then it's about 20 to 30 kilometres on to the Liverpool Bay gas fields.

The CCS project will include carbon capture and compression, which will see CO₂ gas fixed with a binder, concentrated into a single gas and then transferred into the pipeline. Once inside, gas will be compressed to 40-bar atmospheric pressure, which is enough to ensure it travels back into the natural gas reserves.

The firm aims to produce net-zero carbon cement by 2030 or earlier. For that to become a reality, construction work will need to begin in 2024 and wrap up by 2027.

The deadline is dictated by government initiatives to deliver on the UK’s 2050 net-zero goal. 

Mr Walpole said: "Government funding requires us to be commercially operational by 2027. If you expect us to have a three-and-a-half-year build programme, that brings us to 2024. So we have two years to get the planning permissions in place and the funding organised, and so on. 

“So it’s a really short timescale we’re working to now. This is going to be the first of its kind [in the UK] and it's a proof of concept.”