Episode 2 - Sustaining sustainability

Speaking Concretely is the official podcast of the Cement Association of Canada.

Episode 2 welcomes guests Sarah Petrevan and Dr. Chris Bataille as we discuss the importance of industrial decarbonization for heavy industry in Canada.

 

Episode Transcript

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Adam Auer (00:05.339)

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welcome to Speaking Concretely, the official podcast of the Cement Association of Canada. I'm Adam Auer, the president and CEO of the Cement Association of Canada and your host here on Speaking Concretely. This is our second episode of the podcast. And while I'm still getting used to the role of podcast host, I'm excited about the opportunity it provides to have interesting and important conversations with amazing guests. And today's episode will be no exception.
Today, we will be diving into the world of sustainability and net zero, the first of many conversations that will explore these topics from different perspectives. But to get us started, it's important to understand what concepts like sustainability and net zero even mean to heavy industry. Sorry. But to get us started, it's important to understand what concepts like sustainability and net zero mean to heavy industrial sectors like cement. For us, they're not just buzzwords, but real...
tangible and essential considerations for the future of cement and they are already dramatically remaking our industry. Heavy industry is responsible for almost 30 % of global greenhouse gas emissions, of which cement alone accounts for about 7%. So if we take the challenge of climate change seriously, cement has to be part of the conversation. And we are. At the end of 2022, we announced a first of its kind partnership with the federal government to implement a roadmap to net zero cement and concrete.
A few months later, in May 2023, we launched our industry action plan to net zero, a collaborative call to action, transparently modelling how the cement and concrete industry could reduce emissions by 40 % in 2030, 60 % in 2040, with net zero by 2050 as the ultimate goal. To explore why these commitments matter and the role of public policy in securing their success, I'm joined by two very impressive people.
Adam Auer (02:05.403)recently awarded 2024 Green Building Champion, our very own Vice President of Industrial Decarbonization, Sarah Petrevan, and Dr. Chris Bataille, International Expert on the Decarbonization of Cement and Steel, as well as adjunct research fellow with Columbia University Center on Global Energy Policy. Welcome to both of you, and thank you for joining me today to share your insights and expertise with our audience. I want to jump right in by...
just setting the context for this discussion. And Chris, I'm hoping you can help sort of set the table, if you will, by providing a little bit of context on why heavy industries like cement are important. Like how do they fit into the broader challenge of climate change and the transition to the net zero economy?
Chris Bataille (02:52.11)No, absolutely. Thank you, Adam. Heavy industry is not the first thing most people come that people think about and they generally avoid it if they possibly can. You know, a school or a visit to a steel plant, cement plant, chemicals plant is not the first thing that most people's idea of a good time to do for them with their leisure time. But it quite literally holds our civilization up between steel, cement and chemicals. They provide the material of our entire civilization, the building you're in.
You know the the superstructure the all the materials the computer you might be sitting in from all this stuff comes from these materials come from heavy industry as the world you know as our pop global population grows and peaks out and Stabilizes maybe comes down a bit
Global living standards are getting better and as they get better people need more need more of these basic materials. It's not for excess consumption, it's for basic infrastructure, for water, for energy, for transport, what have you. And quite like and we're going to see growing demand in most places.
Adam Auer (03:55.643)So picking up more you're saying, you know, heavy industries like cement, steel, chemistry, fertilizer, mining, you know, they essentially provide the building blocks for so many other aspects of our economy. They produce the feed stocks for other important industries like construction, automotive, agriculture, aerospace, you name it. And they're typically very capital intensive. They're cyclical in nature and energy intense and greenhouse gas intensive. Chris, you know, can you...
You know, just following on sort of your earlier comments, can you offer a little bit of perspective on what makes heavy industry unique in the climate discussion? Like what are the unique technological and economic challenges as well as opportunities that heavy industries face?
Chris Bataille (04:39.246)Yeah, no, absolutely. So we're talking about a third of global, about 25 % directly of global emissions here, just over a third if you include all the purchased heat and electricity that goes into these facilities. A key thing to add to your list there is that these facilities last a long time. Once they're built, they generally run 15 to 20 years before major renovation. And with these renovations, they can often go 50, 100 years.
Now, what that means is the things we're building and planning now will be running out to 2050 when we're supposed to be hitting net zero CO2. So this is not something we can put off to the future. It's not like we can do building heat first and transport first and electricity, what have you, because of the long lived life of these facilities.
We have to be thinking about it right now and the next generation of them ideally in all places, not just in the wealthy developed nations, but in developing countries, they have to be near zero. And if they're going to be near zero, it means that we have to prove out those technologies and bring down the cost so that everybody can afford them. Now.
That's the hard part of the equation. The good part of this is that, you know, one of the reasons people don't like to think about heavy industry, because as they think of them as polluting, about dirty air and dirty water and what have you, but a lot of the technologies that we will use to make these things near zero emitting, switching, you know, adding CCS, using hydrogen, using electricity, what have you, means that the facilities will be a lot cleaner.
Sarah Petrevan (06:07.303).
Chris Bataille (06:12.014)right at the local level. And it'd be you could drive past, they may not even know they're there. And you may be able to stick your head right in if the if the gas is cool enough, you could stick your head straight into the smokestack and healthily breathe it. So there's an opportunity here, there, it's going to cost us it's a lot of hard work to get this job done of decarbonization of heavy industry. But it's going to come with some very serious co benefits just for the people who work there, but also for the communities where those where those facilities will be.
Adam Auer (06:41.243)And just a quick acronym check for our audience. CCS is carbon capture and storage, which I'm sure we'll talk about later in the conversation today. Sarah, you lead the cement association's efforts with policymakers to address some of the challenges that Chris has highlighted. Tell us a bit about this work and how policymakers can help create the conditions for effective industrial decarbonization.
Sarah Petrevan (06:57.063)So I really, I like to think about this in terms of metaphors, right? And so if, if the Canadian cement industry is a team that's trying to tackle the problem together, it's about government setting up the playing field to maximize the effectiveness of, of that team.
Right. And so our team again is heavy industry and we're working to decarbonize. So how do we do it? I think the first thing always has to start with certainty and certainty comes from policy. It comes from regulatory and you know, to some extent it comes from financial, but let's talk about the biggest, the biggest question around certainty these days. And that's really about carbon pricing. Right. We put a value on.
what we want to have, which is a clean environment and a clean economy, but we also put a value on what we don't want to have. And that is increased carbon emissions in our atmosphere. So carbon pricing is essential for setting that level playing field. And then we have to think about what's the offense of our team. And that's really about where the conversation around financing and investment comes into play. What enables, incentivizes,

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encourages companies who are spending billions of dollars around the world on decarbonizing their heavy industrial facilities, but what makes them want to do that in Canada, right? So yes, it's a level of playing field and it's certainty around things like carbon pricing, but it's also, you know, a little bit of a carrot to try and attract that international investment into Canada. And then, you know, finally, like, let's give our let's give our team a really great
defense. And I think about defense is, is using the tools of public policy to support the scale up of what you hope that a net zero economy would look like, right. So when we're talking about cement and concrete, you know, that's, that's low carbon concrete that we're building our roads and our hospitals and our schools with. You know, it's about our infrastructure and using public policy tools like
Sarah Petrevan (09:21.575)our purchasing power, right? What do governments spend their money on? Or using other things that we have at our disposal to give a market opportunity to those new materials that our industry and other industries are creating in a net zero pathway.
Adam Auer (09:39.387)I want to pick up a bit on the industrial carbon pricing conversation because it is a bit of a hot topic these days. You know, industrial carbon pricing is often touted as a crucial, you know, even if politically challenging tool for reducing emissions. And so Sarah, what are your thoughts on its effectiveness? but also like, how can we introduce or implement pricing carbon pricing in a way that's both fair, but also obviously effective.
Sarah Petrevan (10:00.615)So, I mean, I always, I always think back to the days when, you know, we were first starting to think globally about, about carbon pricing and, and what economists used to say about carbon pricing has kind of really stuck with me throughout my career. And that is carbon pricing is what they call first best climate policy.
When you're looking at how to reduce emissions across the economy, it's the first thing you do and it's the best thing you do. You know, there was a recent, there was a recent study and this is where my lack of study notes are really going to come and haunt me. But there was a recent study put out by the Canadian climate Institute that said that there was an overwhelming majority of our emissions reductions in Canada that were going to come from the industrial carbon price. And if you take that away, you know, you really take away.
the backbone of Canada's plan to not only reduce our emissions, but also like it's part of our economic plan, right? Because the world is moving in a direction to reduce emissions. And so going back to sort of the investment conversation, right? If we're going to attract investment in Canada, which solidifies industrial plants through the future, and that translates into businesses and local communities and jobs for Canadians.
You know, all of that is really underpinned by maintaining an industrial carbon price. I think when we talk about effectiveness and how it can be implemented in a way that is both fair and effective, you know, we could probably do a whole show just on this question. But, you know, I think about carbon pricing being in line with technology development. So ensuring that industry can remain competitive throughout the low carbon transition.
And, you know, keeping the price in line with a company being able to avail themselves of different clean technologies on the market to reduce, to reduce their emissions, right? Because this is not just about companies paying a lot of money to pollute in future. It's about creating an incentive where they want to invest in those clean technologies so that they reduce their pollution overall.
Sarah Petrevan (12:23.271)And then I think, you know, the conversation around globalization and international trade flows is a super important conversation when we're talking about carbon pricing. You know, you don't want to create a situation where your carbon pricing system is so strict, but that, you know, imports that are coming from countries that aren't coming, aren't covered under a carbon price, come in and, you know, price their products lower and undercut.
your domestic production in the marketplace, because that doesn't do anything to support the clean economy transition. So it's always, you know, with carbon pricing, it's always about finding the sweet spot between, you know, doing the absolute best we can to reduce our emissions, but at the same time, you know, maintaining the strength of our economy, our businesses and maintaining and maintaining jobs.
Adam Auer (13:15.227)Chris, one of the things that's kind of implicit in this discussion, but not really noted explicitly very often is that if we're going to be successful in achieving a net zero economy, industry investments in net zero and related technologies are going to have to be profitable. I mean, heavy industries are not charities, they're not nonprofits, they're in the business of producing useful goods that in turn produce a profit for their owners and shareholders.
Is carbon pricing enough to achieve this?
Chris Bataille (13:49.39)That's an excellent question. What's the phrase? It's a necessary but insufficient condition. We need it, but it's not enough. The interesting thing is we have the technology at hand to decarbonize most industries, including cement and concrete making. Now, the current technology we have adds to that cost.
And it actually makes it considerably more expensive to make it like a kilogram or a ton of clinker, which is the primary component in cement, which was the stuff that holds concrete and sand, what have you together. But it actually doesn't add that much to the cost of a building, a piece of infrastructure, a foundation of a house, what have you. It's just because it's a wholesale commodity, it gets all sold into a wholesale market. And it's not distinguished from the dirty stuff that it just gets priced at priced out of existence is the problem.
So if we can connect the willingness to pay, add, you know, less than a percent to a building or a foundation or what have you, right? To the people willing to supply it, if we can directly bypass the wholesale market and directly connect them, we end up with a far more, far more viable business plan there. Now, you know, that's going to be probably how we'll do it for the first round of, you know, clean steel, clean cement, clean what have you. But the problem is you can't run a whole economy that way, right? You really need, you know,
carbon pricing to slowly rise, push into suppliers to do the cheaper things, some nutritious material substitution, what have you, like using less clinker and more ground limestone and calcine clays and fly ash and what have you. But that's gonna add to the cost of making cement. And if your domestic suppliers are making those investments, adding those costs to their supply,
but you're just letting cheap, dirty stuff come in from overseas and not adding that cost there, it's gonna wipe out your domestic investments, make them pointless, to be honest. So this is where, if we're going to do, if, you know, carbon pricing is core to this, if you're gonna start putting on fairly strong carbon pricing policy, you have to start thinking about what we call border carbon adjustments or border standards.
Chris Bataille (16:03.79)where if someone's bringing in a boatload of clinker from somewhere else, they have to pay for their carbon content too. So that's one part of the equation. Now that's where we're slowly tightening the GHG intensity on the industry. When we want the industry to make transformative investments where they put CCS on carbon capture and storage on the back end of a cement facility and knock out all the emissions, they have to...
the cost is in the hundreds of millions to low billions for those first facilities. And then they get cheaper over time. A, you can do that kind of direct contracting with someone willing to pay for that product. There are only so many buyers willing to do that. But this is a key role for government where it comes in with help with lower cost financing, perhaps for initial subsidies, shared across government, shared across different entities to get that first plant proven.
Right. Once that first plant works and we know we can produce near zero emissions cement, it becomes a whole lot easier to get cheaper finances. It gets a whole lot easier to get customers for, for that cement. It's just regular cement, but it's super clean. And then the people building buildings, building of the infrastructure can label their stuff as being green, as being made with green cement. So we need both that, that, you know, that slow rise and that, that squeeze coming from carbon pricing. We need protection for our investments with

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border carbon adjustments, you know, GHG standards, what have you. But we need, also we need separate support for those transformative facilities that change the best available standard and let us view the whole sector differently so that, you know, come 10 years from now, we're only building clean facilities.
Adam Auer (17:50.491)Sarah, can you help us translate a little bit of what Chris said in the context of cement specifically? I mean, you mentioned in your response to the first question, you know, the sort of three pillars of interventions that are kind of required. We're talking about carbon pricing, we talked about financing supports, we talked about, you know, creating market demand. Can you kind of tease that out a little bit, building on what Chris was just saying, and talk a bit about, you know, how do we make sure that we shift the market?
Sarah Petrevan (18:12.839)Shh.
Adam Auer (18:20.347)in ways that actually brings that sufficient financial value to the reduced emissions investments and of course importantly attract those investment dollars to make those investments possible.
Sarah Petrevan (18:32.647)Yeah, sure. So I mean, Chris and I love this topic. I feel like he and I have had hours and hours and hours of conversations over the years really trying to unpack this and unpack it specifically for the cement industry. But, you know, kind of just picking up on what Chris said, like we have to accept the fact that even though it might be technologically possible to deliver net zero cement or even net zero concrete to the marketplace today.
The market failure is that nobody is willing to pay for it. Nobody is willing to buy it, right? And it has to do with the way that we construct buildings and the budgets that we make and how we design things and the same is true for roads. So if we're gonna unpack that, we have to think, okay, what are the things that we can do to kind of address that in the short term? Because ideally it's not gonna be that way forever, but it's probably gonna be that way.
maybe for the next 10 to 12 years, right, as the entire economy kind of goes through this big transition. So, you know, without getting too nerdy for our audience, one of the first things that you can do is called a carbon contract for difference. And really what that is, is you accept the fact that, you know, producing no emissions or near zero emissions is actually worth something, right? Because,
If you can produce it, somebody wants to have that attribute. because they say, you know, either we don't want to, we don't want to pay a carbon price or, you know, we want our, our products. I mean, it's a bit simplistic, but we want our products to say that they don't have emissions attached to them. And so, you know, a company like a cement facility or, or any heavy industrial facility would start selling those carbon credits onto the market. And what a, what a carbon contract for difference does is it gives you like a guaranteed.
price, right? And how that works on financing for a project is it means that, you know, you can, you can make your OpEx investment, your operating expenditures of your investment and what it costs to build that project, because you know, that guaranteed you're going to get a minimum value for your carbon credit that you're selling onto a marketplace.
Sarah Petrevan (20:46.247)But then let's also think about the fact that, you know, we're heavy industry, right? We're cement companies, right? Our success in the future is about selling cement, right? It's not about getting into offset markets and selling credits and all of these like really complex thing that, you know, hundreds of people in international climate policy are, you know, spend full -time jobs trying to figure out how to govern. And that's,
really comes down to the fundamentals of the only way that we're going to do anything differently is to buy things differently. And so what does that mean? That means that you need early adopters who are willing to stick their necks out and say, you know what, I'm actually interested in buying low carbon concrete. I actually want to buy net zero cement for my project. And I accept that it might cost a little bit more initially, but I'm making that commitment.
And so, you know, governments are ideally positioned to make that commitment, right? There's lots of movement in the policy landscape on this internationally, right? A lot of it is called buy clean. And certainly, you know, the United States has led that initiative in North America where they recognize that, you know, we actually have to buy some of these, these lower carbon products and they can use the purchasing.
of the United States government to send a signal to the marketplace to say, yeah, we're not interested in buying anything with a carbon footprint higher than this. And in fact, we want to encourage industry to take a look at our absolute lowest that we're willing to buy and encourage us to go lower. And so it's a very complimentary type of policy where industry and government can work together.
to help support the transition to a lower carbon future and actually support innovation within industries by continually assessing where the baseline should be and whether or not it could go lower. I think there are leaders also in the private sector that can play a meaningful role. There are initiatives in Canada like the Climate Smart Building Alliance, which is trying to get a bunch of private companies together.
Sarah Petrevan (23:00.551)to actually create purchasing power around low carbon concrete to actually put their hands up and say, yeah, you know what, I'm going to pay a little bit extra right now because I recognize the greater good. Internationally, we see similar things in the first movers coalition, right? They commit to buy lower carbon concrete or lower carbon steel, like lower carbon building products to help try and...
and move the marketplace or accelerate how these materials diffuse into the marketplace. And those are really important, right? We don't get to net zero without it.
Adam Auer (23:36.507)Since you mentioned the United States, I feel like we gotta ask this kind of broader question about how jurisdictions are both cooperating, but also increasingly competing in this space, right? You know, climate change is a global collective challenge. You know, countries have for years sought international agreement on solutions, but lately there's been this emerging narrative around competition. You know,
being, you know, what are the economic advantages of being first in the race to bring net zero solutions to the market? And you talked a little bit, Sarah, about some of the things that the U .S. is doing to try and be first in the race for a lot of a lot of the industries in the U .S. And we see this playing out in Canada as well. Of course, we have, you know, massive capital grant programs like the Net Zero Accelerator. We have.
a bunch of new tax credits around carbon capture, utilization and storage and other clean technologies. And even, you know, novel risk sharing instruments like the carbon contracts for difference that you mentioned, Sarah, they're all being deployed here in Canada to help secure Canada's share of a net zero global economy. And, you know, this is being done, you know, particularly relevantly to Canada. This is being done against the backdrop of moves in the U .S.
which is spending close to a trillion dollars under the Inflation Reduction Act. I'd like to hear from both of you on this one. What are your thoughts on the balance between cooperation, cooperation in terms of policy and international instruments and also technology development, but also competition? What's the right balance between that cooperation and competition when it comes to accelerating the path to net zero? Chris, why don't we start with you on this one?
Chris Bataille (25:27.886)Sure, this is a really interesting question. Just to pick up a bit on what Sarah was saying a moment ago, when you're doing one of these transformative plants that are near zero emitting, there's a lot of extra risk, right? So upfront, there's a lot of risk. There's technical risk, there's extra financing risk. We know there's standard market risk going over time, but you've also sort of got ongoing risk where the price of the product goes up and down.

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You know, your very, your extra inputs go up and down. If you're using CCS, you've got extra energy, what have you. So these very first plants need quite a bit of upfront support in terms of financing, right? And then they need ongoing support. And this can be done in a lot of different ways. And what Sarah was talking about there, the contracts for difference, it can do, it could do both. You could have some extra funding upfront, but the CFD could cover both your upfront risk and your ongoing.
What the Americans are embarking upon is something really interesting, where they have the Office of Clean Energy Deployment, which just handed out about a month or so ago, basically half a billion dollars to two different cement companies to start down the road of one of these near zero emitting plants. And they've got a mixture of different, of both CCS and cementitious material substitution and what have you. But on top of that extra money they're getting upfront,
to get the plant in place, they're also going to get $85 a ton for the CCS for 10 years through the IRA. So they're getting an upfront support and they're getting an ongoing support. My own calculations that I've done over time show that if you had nothing else, you need about $150 odd per ton in order to make the CO2 equivalent to make these things happen, right? So, you know,
These are expensive. Existing policy is not in place to get the, like the US is half aware where they need to be with the IRCCS, but with those upfront supports, we might be getting pretty close. Canada, we're in a different space where we've got all these funding mechanisms like what you talked about there, but we don't have a lot that, see, the CFDs have been very slow coming in terms of that ongoing support that'll be necessary to get those plants going.
Chris Bataille (27:45.71)The Europeans have their own system of funding through all their various funding agencies and what have you. Now, what's really interesting is these very first plants are very expensive. It's a lot of weight on whoever's taking that risk of getting the jurisdiction and the company doing it. Then it's a question of how much advantage do they actually get? They've shown it worked. It's pretty easy to reverse engineer a lot of this stuff. So how much advantage do they get?
for showing that it's possible. It's not like a brand new electric car that jumps forward or a new solar panel where you get to hang on to the IP for a few years and sell extra. You're gonna get copied pretty quickly. So to my mind, competition is good to show you can do it and be first to market and first selling for a premium. But for some of this stuff, I think some more cooperation might be a good idea amongst allies, amongst parties that are used to cooperating with one another.
for key technologies. The British did this for offshore, floating offshore wind. You know, it wasn't, they have a huge resource around the British islands in order to actualize that it was too much for the individual wind companies to take on. So the British government got in there and cooperated with them to design the boats, design the floats, get over some of the key technical hurdles. And once that was done, once the helpful supply chain was solved through, threw them back into what we call verse auctioning with CFDs.
where the companies would bid for subsidies and whoever could deliver, you know, X, you know, whoever a gigawatt hour, a gigawatt hours of electricity at the least cost got that subsidy. So we can use all these instruments in creative ways together to get this to happen to lower risk, but to do it efficiently with public purse money.
Sarah Petrevan (29:34.151)So I was gonna say, so I love this question, but I'm gonna approach it differently than Chris did, although I always agree with everything that he says.
Adam Auer (29:36.219)Sarah, how about you? I mean, you've been, you know.
Sarah Petrevan (29:48.551)So I mean, like from a 10 ,000 foot level, right, you absolutely need both, right? International cooperation is what gets you policy ideas, right? So if the United States is figuring out buy clean, great, that's something that Canada can latch onto, right? If Europe has figured out how, you know, some of the engineering or some of the idiosyncrasies about...
how you build low carbon buildings and how that construction and design and engineering is really different than what we do in North America. Awesome, right? Everybody seeks to kind of benefit from that cross collaboration and kind of creating like a level playing field for the rules, right? For some of the things that Chris and I are talking about, right? Monetizing your carbon and building projects and figuring out how that all gets done internationally in a way that works for everybody.
You absolutely need collaboration for that. But here's where I like competition, right? And here's kind of what makes what gets me excited about some of the jobs that I do is it's like competition is fun, right? Like who gets to do this? And who gets to do this first? And I really, really like that there is an international competition. Like I really, really like.
that in Canada, you know, we can say, well, you know, we're interested in attracting investment into Canada. Let's look at what other jurisdictions are doing and how does that, how does that provide instruction or a pathway for what we should be doing in Canada? Right. Because, cause we want to build it first and they want to build it first. And those guys over there want to build it first. Right. And it's that, it's that healthy competition towards like building these massive transformational.
net zero projects that I think gets a lot of our members, you know, in Canada, but also just like some of the heavy industry companies around the world, like it kind of kind of what gets them up in the morning, so to speak, right. And so, you know, I think, I think we can learn a lot from that competition. Because, you know, whoever gets to do it first, everybody's going to see that and say, well, that's super interesting, right? Like, that's how they finance that, or that's the technology they use. And I wonder,
Sarah Petrevan (32:00.103)I wonder if that would work for me or not, you know, and I often think a lot about the cement industry and what knowledge dissemination is going to look like because, you know, cement is an interesting industry in that it's like, it's very, it's very bespoke in some ways, right? Like, yes, you know, everyone notionally makes cement in the same way, but, you know, every plant design and geographic footprint and all of these things are different. And so I like to think about how,
you know, knowledge dissemination from this global competition will actually impact the industry over the next, you know, two or three years. So I think, you know, to be successful, you need, you need a very healthy dose of both and, and time will tell as to whether or not it, how much of a difference it actually makes.
Adam Auer (32:51.483)So despite what is obviously a very complex issue, I think everyone appreciates just from the different responses we've had to these three kind of high level questions that there's a ton of complexity here to explore. You guys both come across in your tone as sounding actually really quite positive about how a lot of this is going. And I thought that actually might be a nice place to kind of end this particular conversation is maybe to...
Sarah Petrevan (33:21.159). .
Adam Auer (33:21.243)describe a little bit where that hope comes from. What gives you hope in facing the complexities that we do, especially the unique complexities that are inherent to the very important heavy industrial decarbonization part of this puzzle that we face. Where do you find your hope? Where do you see the opportunities for meaningful progress? And Chris, why don't we start with you again?
Chris Bataille (33:47.758)Sure. The hope I get out of all of this is I think after World War II, we got kind of stuck at a certain technological level. Things stopped really improving in heavy industry and those deep foundational industries for our whole civilization. What the climate crisis is doing is forcing us to revisit how we do stuff and become a whole lot more efficient, change the processes.

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you know, use much cleaner inputs, use CCS where we have to, and because it's expensive, it's forcing us to really rethink how we do everything else. Like I personally think we're on the verge of a clean industrial revolution that's going to dramatically improve our GDP per capita, our welfare, you know, air quality, water quality, improve work, what have you. Like if we can, if we can punch through this problem, we're going to be in a much better place than we were, than we were before.
Adam Auer (34:45.211)I love that answer. How about you, Sarah?
Sarah Petrevan (34:46.023)So I just want, you know, full disclosure. I'm not being paid to say this, but I think, I think my job gives me hope and gives me excited. Like I get to work with Canada's cement companies who are all, you know, deeply and legitimately committed to trying to do their part to solve climate change and actually transition the Canadian.
cement industry to net zero and have actually taken the time to think about what projects do we build? Where do we build them? Where are our emissions reductions going to come from? Like, let's put some numbers in the window and hold ourselves accountable. I think that's really exciting. You know, we've got tremendous...
modernization projects happening in Canada. Some of them are public and some of them aren't, but I look at what the next two years holds for the Canadian cement industry. And I'm kind of excited about the prospect of maybe blowing some minds of people to actually say, like, hey, like in Canada, at least in the cement industry, we're going to show you what industrial decarb can actually look like. And that's...
That's pretty exciting for me. That's what gets me up every day and doing this job. So, I agree with Chris. I think we're going to see a massive transformation. And certainly, we're going to do that in this industry in Canada. And that's super exciting.
Adam Auer (36:19.131)I certainly share that enthusiasm for the leadership in our sector, Sarah. And thank you very much for that answer. And I mean, I have to say, this feels like a conversation that we could continue for hours and hours. And I really do look forward to kind of pulling on the threads of some of the comments and topics that you guys raised throughout the conversation today in future episodes. But I want to thank you both very much, Sarah and Chris.
for your amazing insight and for taking the time to talk to me today. And I think you've given our audience a really important outline of the challenges and opportunities we face on the road to net zero. I'm sure it will stimulate some comments and questions from our audience that will hopefully help us guide future episodes as well. So please audience, we look forward to hearing your thoughts on the discussion today. And I know, picking up on what you were saying, Sarah, I know this transformation is not gonna happen overnight. I don't think any of us expects that it will.
but I'm also really proud to be part of an industry here in Canada that's committed to leadership and, and bold action. So thank you to everyone who's been listening to our podcast so far. Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast for more concrete conversations. And I look forward to speaking with you again next time. Take care.