The cement industry is at a crossroads. As global construction demands soar, so do the sector’s carbon emissions—contributing nearly 8% of global CO₂ output. But Markus Kritzler, Chief Revenue Officer at Carbon Upcycling Technologies, believes there’s a way to build a better future—literally.
Markus has found purpose in a game-changing innovation: a technology that transforms industrial waste into high-performance construction materials. Carbon Upcycling’s process reinvents how we think about byproducts like electric arc furnace slag, fly ash, and clay—infusing them with captured CO₂ to create powerful supplementary cementitious materials. The kicker? These materials can replace up to 40% of traditional cement—without compromising strength or performance.
What truly sets this solution apart isn’t just its environmental impact—it’s the business case. While many green alternatives come with a hefty price tag, Carbon Upcycling’s materials remain cost-competitive, making sustainability a smart financial choice too.
In this episode, Markus breaks down the cement manufacturing process, highlighting why it’s so emissions-heavy—and how Carbon Upcycling is flipping the script on carbon in construction. Want to learn how your next project can help combat climate change? Hit play now.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Marcus, you are calling in today from San
Antonio, Texas.
What's it like down in Texasright now?
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Oh, it's fairly warm, not as sunny as I would have
liked to, but it's warm, kind ofnice, easygoing.
It's an interesting townbecause there's not a lot going
on in San Antonio, but there arestill four or five big cement
plants around it.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
So it's a huge construction market.
Yeah, it's just an interestingplace to be.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
That's cool.
Are cyber trucks safe downthere?
Are they getting spray painted?
Speaker 2 (00:35):
They're pretty safe.
I'd say, yeah, that's cool,yeah, it's definitely a
different environment, very,very good.
So yeah, it's definitely adifferent environment.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Very, very good.
So we're going to be talkingabout the company, your chief
revenue officer, of CarbonUpcycling Very, very interesting
concept for a business andwe're going to be talking all
about the stack technology stackyou guys have, how you guys
implement things where you'reoperating, et cetera, what the
(01:06):
value proposition is andgenerally just to educate people
on, you know, this sort of umreasonably new, I would say
concept in, uh, in dealing withthis kind of uh um substance,
substrate, material, whateveryou want to call it.
So, yeah, it's going to be kindof interesting.
(01:27):
Are you pretty excited aboutthis field of work?
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Yeah, I'm very excited.
Actually, I spent a long partof my career working in
investment banking, which is abit of making deals left and
right and just putting companiestogether, and then I spent
several years working in thecement industry as a head of
(01:53):
corporate strategy at Holcim andI have to say, when you're on
the investment banking side ofthings, you're clearly enabling
things and there's a value forthat, yeah, but you're just kind
of making money, passing moneyleft and right.
You're not actually buildinganything, right, whereas if
(02:13):
you're in the cement kind of inthe building materials industry,
you're building stuff.
So that's.
It's really exciting to bejoining carbon upcycling,
because it's not only on thebuilding side of things but it's
building it with a purpose.
Right, you're doing low carbonmaterials.
You're enabling a change in anindustry that has been very risk
averse for many years.
So, yeah, very excited and veryexcited to be here with you on
(02:36):
your podcast.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Awesome, and you're two months into this position
with the company with thecompany?
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Yes, so I've been working with them for a short
time.
I've followed this space forseveral years.
I've kept in touch with thebuilding materials industry and
I've seen some of theinnovations that have been going
on.
There's a lot of very excitingstuff out there, but I think
this one is at the verge or atthe transition from an advanced
(03:06):
technology startup to a kind ofa deployment growth company.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
Right on.
Okay, well, I'm excited to hearabout this because I love
detail.
So, as the chief revenueofficer, you're going to give me
as much detail as anon-engineer can give us, or a
non-chemical engineer, for thatmatter.
So, yeah, let's get into it asa non-engineer can give us, or a
non-chemical engineer for thatmatter.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
So, yeah, let's get into it.
Welcome to the Site.
Visit Podcast Leadership andperspective from construction
With your host, james Faulkner.
Business as usual, as it hasbeen for so long.
Now that it goes back to whatwe were talking about before and
hitting the reset button, youknow you read all the books.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
You read the evening, you read scaling up, you read
good to great.
You know I could go on.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
We've got to a place where we found the secret serum
we found the secret potion wecan get the workers in.
We know where to get them.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
One time I was on a job sale for a while and
actually we had a semesterconcrete and I ordered like a
Korean-Finnish patio.
Oh fun, did you say?
Chill these days.
I was down at Dallas and a guyjust hit me up on LinkedIn out
of the blue and said he wasdriving from Oklahoma to Dallas
to meet with me because he heardthe Faber-Connect platform on
your guys' podcast.
(04:18):
Own it, crush it and love it.
And we celebrate these valuesevery single day.
Let's get down to it.
Let's do it.
And we celebrate these valuesevery single day.
Let's get down to it.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
All right.
So, marcus, tell me all aboutthis company and then we're
going to talk about you and yourbackground, because I just want
for everyone to sort of hookthem in to know what we're
talking about here.
Give us like the Kohl's NotesDo you remember what that is?
I know some of.
Give us like the Cole's NotesDo you remember what that is?
I know some of the youngergenerations like Cole's Notes.
What the hell is Cole's Notes?
(04:49):
Well, for us.
it's just going to be that verysuccinct overview barbecue pitch
on what you're doing, what yourtechnology does.
So if you could just give that,give us the leg elevator pitch
of what it is Right.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
So what the technology does is it produces a
supplementary cementitiousmaterial, which is called an sem
, which is another type of uhcementitious material.
So if you think of portlandcement, it's one type of cement.
Yeah, the romans obviously hadtheir own type of cement, which
was a post-holandic rock crushedinto a small size.
(05:24):
What we're doing is we're alsoactivating certain waste
materials or materials that arerelatively inert, and making
them active so that they canreact with water the same way
that a cement would reactDifferent chemical properties
and so on, but it's essentiallythe same concept behind it.
And so the company, what itdoes is it developed a
(05:48):
technology that is relativelypeople hate it when I call it a
simple technology, but it's asimple concept behind it.
But it activates things like,for example, well, materials
that have been used in thecement industry for a long time,
like slag and fly ash, thathave certain properties.
We're able to activate thingsthat have lower activity levels,
(06:11):
like electric arc furnace slagor fly ash that has been
stockpiled for many years, andactivate it so that you can use
it in the industry.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
When you say activate , that seems like a sort of an
industry term.
What does that mean to you guys?
How do you?
When you say activate, thatseems like a sort of an industry
term.
What does that?
What does that mean to you guys, and what is it?
What?
How do you describe when yousay activate?
Speaker 2 (06:29):
So um, think of it as as um like, if you put clay,
you mix clay with water, it justbecomes moth, right.
When you mix a gypsum withwater, it becomes a hard, it
hardens, right.
So that's the reactivity thatyou would have in a material.
So certain, certain materialshave different levels of
reactivity and it the binding uh, force, uh, or the binding
(06:56):
strength that it has when, whenit's the uh after a certain
while, it differs from materialto material.
Okay, uh, so ordinary Portlandcement reactivity, if it has a
reactivity level, let's say thatyou can achieve 100% of
strength in 28 days withPortland cement.
Some materials might have 80%of that strength at 28 days and
(07:16):
some might have slightly aboveof that, like 120% strength
compared to the Portland cement,percent strength compared to
the Portland cement.
So what we're doing is we'retaking materials that have maybe
a 60, 50 percent strengthreactivity and bringing them to
a level where they can have 110,120 percent strength reactivity
.
So you can essentiallysubstitute some of the clinker
(07:41):
in the Portland cement with ourmaterials.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
Okay.
So just to get this straight,because you know I don't know
your industry much.
We know about construction, butthis is like down to the
details.
So in your, typically, what wesee and everyone's used to is a
pump truck shows up on the jobsite.
It's filling in a slab, that'sthe deal.
(08:06):
Or filling in forms.
Okay, what happens back beforethat pump truck shows up?
I mean, yeah, on theengineering side, obviously
there's.
You know what kind of mixyou're doing, you know what kind
of concrete you're doing.
So you guys are are creatingthe products that are in that
stack of what they would bechoosing to use.
(08:28):
Correct, right, okay, so thatproduct.
Then your customers areobviously the concrete companies
that are ordering product fortheir clients.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Right.
So the way that the industryworks is when you have a job
site, you would have the readymix truck, pull up and just cast
everything and it's beingpumped by someone else, but the
ready mix truck is the one thatbrings the mix to the job site,
right, yeah, that ready mixtruck comes from a ready mix
plant that usually has a coupleof silos with different
(09:03):
materials.
They usually have sand, gravel,water and then they have a silo
for either blended cement,ordinary cement or the SEMs.
So fly ash slag, for example,and think of it as a gas station
, right, the truck goes in andjust kind of pulls the different
(09:23):
ingredients from each of thesilos, mixes it and takes it to
the job site.
Gotcha, okay.
The part that we're working onis when you have ordinary
Portland cement.
That's a cemented space withclinker which is made in a
calcined clean kiln that has ahuge amount of emissions in it.
The SEM is a byproduct from thesteel industry or the power
(09:48):
plant power industry.
So either fly ash from thepower plants or slag from the
steel industry that they grind,and it has some of the same
characteristics of the Portlandcement.
They can kind of add some ofthat supplementary cementitious
material to the mix and displaysthe use of cement right.
So what we're doing is kind ofthat SEM silo we're producing a
(10:13):
material that has some of thesame qualities of what they're
currently using so that they candisplace more of the cement
side.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
I see Okay.
More of the cement side, I seeOkay.
So the value proposition hereis many fold, obviously, but I'm
just going to take a few stabsat the dark here.
So first is the environmentalimpact of that material and what
(10:44):
that You're recapturing thatcarbon in that product.
Is that correct?
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Right.
So the reason why this isimportant, I think there's a
couple of elements.
The first thing that comes tomind, obviously, is the carbon
capture that you're doing in theprocess and that has to do a
little bit with our technology,and this came to being from a
vision of trying to capturecarbon carbon emissions and make
(11:13):
it into a product that has somevalue added.
So that's why it's carbonupcycling.
We're upcycling some wastestreams into something that's
usable, value adding Now, butthe big value of it is think of
the.
I'm going to focus a little biton the US cement industry or
building materials industry.
The US consumes about 120million tons per annum of cement
(11:39):
.
Out of those, about 30%.
So about yeah, let's say 30million 20, 25 million of that
is imported cement that comesfrom overseas.
About five of that comes fromCanada, but 20 million are
coming from overseas.
When you look at cement, thevalue per ton of cement is
(12:00):
actually very low.
So when you're buying cement, ahuge amount of what you're
paying for is logistics right.
So if you're importingsomething from Vietnam or from
Turkey all the way to the US andthen you're having all the
supply chain and then you takeit to the job site.
A lot of that is just kind ofwasted.
Forget about the carbonfootprint.
(12:23):
It's a lot of wasted money fromimporting material that is low
value to the job site.
So what we're enabling is wecan enable locally sourced
materials so that you candisplace some of those imports
locally sourced materials thathave a lower carbon footprint,
not only from the logistics sideof view, but also from the
(12:44):
process that we implement tomanufacture those materials.
I think one of the big problemsthat we're seeing is obviously
the carbon footprint gets a lotbetter, but we're displacing
current imports.
That, yeah, if you're lookingat it today, it's one third or
28% of it, but demand is growingright, so that's that's going
(13:06):
to be an increasing number overtime.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Okay, that makes sense.
So do you need that?
Do you need the?
When you say that the locallysourced?
Locally sourced to what?
To your manufacturing facilityor for the project?
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Um, no, so, um, what we, what we do, is we, um, we
develop, the develop theprojects together with the
cement partners.
So we don't actually go with theready mix partners.
There's some exceptions to therule, obviously, but usually we
try to work with the cementpartners to help them solve the
issue that they have today,which is both the carbon
(13:42):
footprint as well as thecapacity.
What we do is we have a linethat is, an add-on production
facility to what they alreadyhave.
We take up CO2 from their flustack, put it in our process, we
put in some feedstock, which iseither clay, fly ash or slack,
we activate it and then thatfeedstock, or that product that
(14:04):
comes out of our process, getsblended in with our cement or
gets shipped out separately asan additive.
Let's call it Okay, right, sowhen we're talking about locally
sourced material, we're talkingabout using fly ash or electric
car furnace lag that isavailable close to our cement
(14:25):
partners, or clay, for example.
Right, so it's not somethingthat you have to haul hundreds
of miles to get to our facility,it's something that is usually
already there.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Excuse me, bad cold, but I didn't cancel.
That's the main part.
So, yeah, let's, can we just?
Obviously now, I think peoplehave an understanding of you
know what the core stack is,what you guys do, and I want to
jump back into that after.
So, how did you get into this?
So you've been in this positionfor a couple of months now.
(15:03):
Yeah, and it's just thefinancial element of it and the
environmental impact thatattracted you to doing this.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
No, I think so.
I worked in the cement industryfor a while.
I know a lot of the peopleinvolved in some of the other
companies, and this is onecompany that came up through
connections and it was somethingthat, hey, this company has
developed a technology that isalready good to go.
I've had a lot of contacts withother startups in the past and
(15:39):
a lot of it is still researchand development, and so this one
seemed like it was already at astage where you could make a
difference, and I had beenworking in private equity for
the last five years and I justkind of yeah, was looking for
one area where I could stillmake an impact out of something
(16:00):
right and yeah, so that's alittle bit of serendipity how we
connected through the grapevineI guess the industry at the end
of the day, is not so big.
You know each other it seemedlike the right moment to jump in
and try to make an impact.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
Are some of the other companies, like Heidelberg, et
cetera.
Are they trying to do somesimilar things to you guys like
the Heidelberg, et cetera?
Speaker 2 (16:24):
Are they trying to do some similar things to you guys
?
So, yeah, I think so.
I think everyone is trying tofigure out a way to kind of
solve this problem.
So the biggest problem I thinkthey're trying to solve
worldwide is clearly the CO2impact, and that's probably
something that they're concernedabout in the mid to long term,
that they know that they need toreduce emissions, uh, and and
(16:48):
to stay competitive so takeeverybody, take everybody
through that more in detail interms of emissions and concrete
so, yeah, so when you build um.
So emissions is a big part ofthe cement industry because of
the limestone, the way that youactivate it is you take the
carbon out of the limestone andthat gets emitted as CO2.
(17:12):
So it's not only from thecombustion of fossil fuels in
the cement kiln, but it's alsothe chemically.
You need to emit a lot of CO2 toget to the clinker that
ultimately makes cement, andthen cement is a glue that binds
the sand and gravel together inconcrete, and then concrete is
obviously what you build thebuildings out of, or at least
(17:34):
the structural elements in someplaces.
And so the more buildings youhave, obviously the more cement
that you need, the more cementthat you need.
If you're producing it withordinary portless cement, then
you need to have clinker, andthat emits a lot of CO2.
So to the extent that you cancapture some of that CO2 from
(17:55):
emissions, as well as displacethe use of clinker, you're
actually reducing the carbonfootprint from the cement
industry, and today I think,depending on the like, the
cement industry emits about 800kilograms per every ton of
cement that is manufactured.
So if you're looking at 120million tons of consumption in
(18:15):
the US, that's roughly yeah, howmuch, I won't do the math right
now, but it's 900 million tonsof CO2 that are being pumped up
in the air every year.
So that's kind of the biggestissue out there from an
environmental point of view andkind of the motivation for us I
think everyone at Carbon andUpcycling too to tackle it.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
Right so is there this is probably a dumb question
and I think all listeners arelike geez James, you're asking a
really dumb question here.
Probably a dumb question, and Ithink all listeners are like
geez, james, are you asking areally dumb question here?
But they're um, as the concreteis setting, is there an
emission, emission element there?
So as as the, as the concreteis like, let's say it's a
(18:59):
concrete slab, for instance,pouring the slab, obviously you
know it's mixed, it's in aliquid or not liquid, but it's
in a pumpable form, and then ithardens.
Is that hardening process there?
Is that producing an emissionat that stage?
Speaker 2 (19:18):
No, it is not so.
The no, no, no, so it's so,it's nothing significant.
But the the uh no, so it's so,it's nothing significant.
But the carbon footprint thatyou have is on the logistics
side, but mostly on theproduction of clinker-based
cement.
Gotcha okay, and actuallythere's a couple of solutions
(19:39):
that actually so concrete willreabsorb some CO2 or over once
it's cast in place, and thereare some solutions that inject
CO2 during the casting stage sothat you can absorb some of that
CO2 at the job site.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
Interesting.
Okay yeah, okay yeah, because Ikeep hearing things about that.
I'm just trying to sort of putthose pieces together Now, so
it's similar.
It's basically the impact allthe way from the logistics and
chemical processes in the pastin the manufacturing than it is
on the delivery, right, right.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
And I'd say about 95% of it, or I'd say maybe 85% of
it is in the manufacturing of it, I see, and then some of it in
the logistics.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
Okay.
So now when we talk aboutcompanies that are doing
construction projects, that haveenvironmental standards around
them, in having LEED Gold andLEED Platinum, all that kind of
stuff, so what is thoseparticular types of programs?
(20:52):
How does your product knit intowhat certain requirements there
are for those programs?
Speaker 2 (20:59):
to what certain requirements there are for those
programs.
So the one thing I want topreamble that with is that the
regulatory part of it isrelatively complex.
You have a lot of standardsthat are dictating what you can
do and what you cannot do in ajob site, and I think that's,
for good reason, One of thethings that you cannot do in a
(21:21):
job site and I think that's, forgood reason, One of the things
that you would do.
When you have a LEAF building,for example, you're going to
dictate some of the energyconsumptions that it has, what
the carbon footprint it might be, and so on.
A lot of that usually doesn'ttrickle down to the material
side.
You can prescribe that it'sbuilt with low carbon cement, so
a cement that has a lowercarbon footprint than
(21:43):
traditional, ordinary Portlandcement.
But that usually doesn't getall the way back to the material
because at the end of the dayyou have to go through many
parties that have different riskprofiles, right?
So the general contractor isgoing to have like if an
architect says well, you have tobuild this building with low
carbon cement, Now the generalcontractor has to find a ready
(22:05):
mix producer that has low carboncement, and the ready mix
producer might not have it onhand.
So it goes to the cementcompany and says well, I have a
project for which I need lowcarbon cement now.
So that doesn't necessarilyhappen in sync because the
timing is off and whatever it is.
(22:26):
And when you look at the amount,the share of material in a
built environment, it'srelatively small.
Right, Like you would have.
I don't know how much of abuilding's cost is concrete, but
let's say 10%.
Out of that 10%, maybe 3%, ismaterial cost and the rest is
labor and other stuff.
(22:46):
If you make a savings on that3%, if you need to add 10%
carbon premium or if you can buyit at a discount of 10%, it
really doesn't move the needlefor the whole building, Whereas
the risk of trying something newyou put at risk the whole
building.
You have to tear it down.
(23:08):
So the risk of adversity in thechain is absurdly high.
We have no incentives to trysomething new.
So when you go to a buildingcode that says leave and you
start defining some of thestandards, it won't have.
I think the last part that ittrickles down to is material, I
see, or the building materials.
So it's a kind of verydifficult industry to change
(23:29):
from the demand side.
I think you need to change itfrom the supply side as well or
have business incentives thatalign across the chain.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of developers are are,
you know, leading with a messagethat you know the buildings
that they do and the mandatesthey have as a company is to
have more sustainable buildings,et cetera.
Also, when you have a lot ofgovernment programs, there are,
(24:01):
you know, government buildings,institutions, et cetera, and on
top of that sometimes when it's,um, you know First Nations land
as well, um, there's this other, there's another environmental
requirement, uh, to be the bestpossible, all materials, et
cetera.
Requirement to be the bestpossible, all materials, et
(24:22):
cetera.
You know, it kind of reminds meand it's interesting that you
know Heidelberg obviously beingin the business.
The other business that theywere in for years obviously is
in printing.
You know the printing press andyou know I remember a time I
know we're totally off topichere, but there's a relative
vector here is, you know, withprinting brochures, letterhead
(24:43):
paper.
It used to be like, okay, well,you know, do you have that
little recycling logo on therewith the tree there was, I think
it was fsc or something likethat.
There was a little and thatmeant something.
Right, if you had your businesscard that had that little logo
on it, you're like, okay, well,I guess now that means that you
did actually care about theplanet before you went and
printed your you know 5 000business cards that you're
(25:04):
handing out that are kind oflike garbage, with information
on them.
So are we?
Are you seeing that now, um,with your product when you're
pitching that, or your salespeople are, is there?
Is there a you could call it abuilding altruism there, where
people are wanting to do thingsfor that reason?
Speaker 2 (25:26):
yeah, absolutely.
I I think there's uh, you havethis, no new technologies or new
technology changes.
You have this curve of earlyadopters and kind of later um
and we're.
We're seeing that across theindustry where you have cement
companies branding low carboncement already and that's
trickling down to the ready mixand at the same time in the
(25:47):
value chain you have architectsand designers and engineers that
are specifying those types ofcements and it goes a little bit
to the branding that ultimatelygoes to the end consumer.
And right now the people thatare adopting those low-carbon
standards are large corporationsor government departments that
say well, I want to build adepartment of transportation, I
(26:10):
will build all the highways withlow-carbon cement.
And that specificationobviously moves the needle,
because now it's not one singlejob site for a single-family
home that looking for alow-carbon cement.
Now you have to kind ofretrofit the silos that you have
at the ReadyMix plant and theblending units that you have at
(26:30):
the cement plant to accommodatethat Department of
Transportation request, right,right.
And so once you have that inplace now, you start putting it
towards the end customer.
I see, once you have that inplace now, you start putting it
towards the end customer.
So, for example, we're workingtogether with a ready mix
company out of Calgary calledBurnco.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
And they're one of the main players, right.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
Yeah, and it's amazing because we have a unit
that has been manufacturingabout 50, 60, 80 tons per month
at this pilot facility inCalgary and we've worked with
Bernco for that and we'vebranded low-carbon cement for
end customers.
We've poured it on several jobsites and what we do is we say,
(27:12):
well, when they ask forlow-carbon cement, we clearly
supply it with your materials.
But whenever they're not askingfor low-carbon cement, we still
use your materials.
But whenever they're not askingfor low-carbon cement, we still
use your materials because atthe end of the day, it makes
industrial sense to have.
It's a material that is good touse, increases volume, lowers
our costs.
And, yeah, people are notasking for it, but we're still
(27:32):
supplying it.
Right?
Speaker 1 (27:33):
Okay, so that ReadyMix company.
When you guys implement aprogram with them, what's the
setup for them?
How does that work With Burnco,for instance?
Your technology is obviously.
There's some hardware elementto that.
What's on site there?
Can you take us through thatpart?
Speaker 2 (27:51):
Yeah, absolutely.
For cement partners and readymix partners, this is a fairly
transparent technology becauseat the end of the day, they're
buying a product that looks andfeels and smells the same way
that their current products do.
So it's as if you're buying atruck full of cement and just
putting it up in a in a silo,right, okay, that's it.
So they, when they starttesting these things, they need
(28:14):
to have a separate silo for forthis and they need to do a lot
of tests.
And when you're talking to aremix producer that has, they
typically are not assophisticated, chemistry wise
and so on, as a cement, as a bigcement plant, right.
So the the curve to adoptionwith them is much longer than
than with a cement partner.
(28:35):
So you need to do a lot oftests and you need to wait 128
days and look at the materialwhether it breaks or doesn't
break.
But once they've adopted it,it's a seamless integration.
They just have a silo and weput our material in there.
We're also working with CRH inbuilding out a project in
Mississauga, outside of Toronto.
(28:57):
That's a 30,000 ton facilitythat is being built today With
the cement partners.
What we do is we do a lot ofmaterial testing and once it's
set up it blends at the job site, at their plant, and then it
gets shipped out to the readymix plants and they won't even
know that it's a low carboncement.
I mean, if you don't tell them,right, you need to clearly tell
(29:20):
them, but for them it's a lowcarbon cement.
I mean, if you don't tell them,right, you need to clearly tell
them, but for them it's kind ofa one-to-one replacement of
what they already do.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
Okay, so I guess what I'm trying to sort of get my
bearings around is you know ifpeople will go to your website,
carbonupcyclingcom, and you goto your technology tab
carbonupcyclingcom and you go toyour technology tab, um, you,
you have, you talk about this.
(29:47):
Cut co2 is modular.
It's a skid mounted system.
Um, take us through that, likewhat is what is this?
What is that communicating hereon your website?
Speaker 2 (29:56):
um, all right, so you're gonna make me go back to
to our website and see if it'supdated.
But essentially, what thetechnology does is the people
will not buy the technology upfront from us, because these are
facilities that cost maybe 30to 60 million for a unit Gotcha.
And so what we have to do is wehave to work with large
(30:20):
partners for a long-termpartnership agreement.
So, with a cement partner, itmight be a 10-year to 20,
30-year partnership where wecommit to finding the feedstock
that will be activated,committing to having that
feedstock and that's it.
So they have to adjust all thechemistry process and all of
(30:40):
that for that, and then we havea consistent material running
through that facility, right,okay, and so we typically have
an offtake agreement with themat either a tolling fee or a
licensing fee or whatever it is,so that we produce materials
for them and then they blend itto the end customer.
I see so the technology, what wefound and what's really
(31:04):
attractive about it is we havethree of the largest cement
companies invested in ourcompany.
We have CEMEX, crh and TitanCement out of Greece, and what
they really like about it isthat it's a bit of a plug and
play technology, they, they justit's.
It's something that's verysimilar to what they already
have introduces this innovativeidea of using CO2 to mineralize
(31:30):
the materials but it'sessentially something that they
can just kind of plug and playand put right next to their, to
their cement plant.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
Gotcha, okay.
So you guys have a couple ofbusiness lines going on here and
being his chief revenue officer, obviously this is where the
revenue is coming from, right?
So you have the sale ofmaterials.
First of all, that you guys useyour technology that you have
created in order to make thosean upcycle from locally sourced
(31:59):
other materials.
Correct, got that All right?
So, and that is locally,depending on where your
facilities are, for now, untilyou have your technology in some
of these other partners'facilities, correct, correct?
Speaker 2 (32:19):
Yes, correct, that's about it.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
Okay, sorry, I'm just trying to figure it all out
here, yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
Yeah, and I think that's an important part of our
business proposition.
I think that we're looking atthis.
It's a company that isdeploying technology that we've
tested around with differentpartners and we believe it works
and it has significant benefits.
90% of it, or 90% of revenuetoday, would be from selling
(32:51):
material that we produce.
It has a low carbon footprint,but it's about selling material
at a comparable cost to whatthey already have.
You're not paying for a carbonpremium in it, you're paying
same production cost.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
Right that you currently have right.
So that is so.
When it comes to the developermaking decisions with the
engineers on what materials canbe used for that project, the
consideration of using some ofyour materials could be having
the benefit of a low carbon mixor composite obviously, because
(33:30):
you're only part of it.
So that composite mix there youcould plug in yours and it
would be the similarenvironmental benefits of a low
carbon.
But the low carbon wouldtypically be more expensive and
yours comes at a price pointsimilar to if you were not using
(33:50):
any kind of environmentallyfocused components.
Is that correct?
Speaker 2 (33:56):
Yes, absolutely.
That's the gist of it, the gistOur revenue model.
The more that we scale up, thebetter technology will become
and, I think, the lower the costthat we will be able to yield.
But also we're betting on thefuture that there's going to be
(34:17):
some value from reducing thatcarbon footprint.
Yeah, so we're settingourselves up so that we can
capture some of that value aswell going forward, which is, if
you look at the carbon marketstoday are not as developed as we
would like them to be.
But if you look at the Europeanmarket, for example, you have
(34:38):
the carbon credits or carbonallowances that cost today about
80 euros per ton or 70 eurosper ton of CO2 emitted and we
believe that that cost is goingto increase to about 300.
And that regulatory frameworkis probably not going to change
(35:02):
that.
That framework is somethingsimilar will be introduced in
across the world, because Ithink the, the uh, the co2
reduction imperative is going tobe something that people are
going to be more aware of.
Okay, um.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
So can you tell me how that?
Um once that the calculationhas been done in terms of volume
, how much concrete is beingused, with your product included
or as part of that stack?
Um the how do the credits workwith that?
So do you get carbon credit forusing that particular thing, or
is it tax break?
How does, how does it all work?
Speaker 2 (35:33):
so there's, there's two.
Uh, there's two type of creditsand like, or different types of
credit depending on thegeography right uh and you have
some voluntary carbon marketsand some mandatory carbon taxes.
Okay, so the eu what theeuropean union, the way it works
, is that it told the umindustrial emitters uh, you're
(35:55):
gonna have to improve yourcarbon footprint by a certain
date and I'm gonna tax you forevery ton of co2 that you're
emitting.
Okay, so that you don't gobankrupt day one, I'm going to
give you an allowance.
So I'm going to, I'm going togive you a certain amount of
free tax credits so that you can, if you meet one ton of co2,
you can use one of those credits, right?
(36:16):
Okay, and that that amount thatI'm giving you is, I'm going to
reduce it year over year afteryears until it comes down to
zero.
So eventually, you eitherreduce your carbon footprint or
you're going to have to go outto the market, buy that credit
and give it to me.
So I think it's a smart way ofworking.
There's a lot of misalignedincentives in it.
(36:40):
There's a lot of misalignedincentives in it.
Obviously, all of theseregulatory things that people
put in place usually haveunintended consequences, but
essentially it is promoting akind of a smaller footprint of
the industry.
Now, in some of the othergeographies, like Canada, you
can go for a carbon credit.
That's on a voluntary basisthat you can buy two types of
(37:01):
credits.
One of them is for absorbingCO2 out of the atmosphere, and
that's kind of the capturingelement of it, and the other
part is the abatement of.
So you're stopping an industryfrom producing a CO2 zone that
they would have producedotherwise.
So we're capturing a bit ofboth.
(37:23):
We're actually capturing someCO2 out of their flue stack,
which is about 10% to 15% byweight of the product that we
manufacture.
So I wouldn't say it's aninsignificant part, but it's a
smaller share of the CO2footprint impact that we have.
And the biggest one is thatwe're displacing 30% to 40% of
(37:45):
the clinker-based cement.
So we're abating 30% to 40% ofCO2-heavy material that you
would have been producing.
And those two credits havedifferent values to it and
there's different markets andways that you can capture it.
But essentially we're bettingthat the price and the
(38:07):
regulation around those creditsis going to increase over time
and that we're going to be ableto capture some of it.
So today, essentially, we'remaking a profit from like any
other cement company would be,by selling tons of our material,
but eventually a larger shareof our profit is going to come
from being able to impact theCO2 footprint of the industry.
(38:31):
Right, okay.
Speaker 1 (38:33):
So longer term.
There was a couple of thingsthat I can't quite square, so
I'm just going to ask you thesequestions.
So if I'm doing a building inVancouver, for instance, and you
don't have a ReadyMix companyhere with your product in their
silo, a, I can't use yourproduct, obviously, but B if I
(38:55):
did want to use it and thatReadyMix company would contact
you and say we'd like to be partof your program, we'd like to
use your products, and theywould do that.
They would get your materials,but you would be shipping those
materials correct, just likethey would otherwise.
But from where?
Speaker 2 (39:14):
Well, it'll depend a little bit.
I think over time our ambitionis to grow our footprint so that
we can cover most of the demandcenters.
Right, and we're going probablygonna go kind of in the first
stage with the cement partner.
So existing cement plants thatare operating, yeah, um, and
then help them increase theircapacity.
(39:36):
So if you have a one millionton per annum plant, we would
add on maybe 200,000, 300,000tons of additional capacity to
that so that you would alreadybe buying a blended cement that
has a lower carbon footprint orhave both of them shipped
separately and then you mix themat the readiness plant or at
the job site.
(39:56):
I see, okay, at the readinessplant, rather Right, okay.
And I think that longer term isgoing to evolve into a hub and
spoke model so that we also saveon the logistics side.
But if you don't have a, acement plant nearby, then we
would have one unit close to youwith the, co-located with
someone who's emitting co2.
We would be capturing their co2stack and grabbing some
(40:20):
material that is locallyavailable, like a clay,
activating it with that and youwould bring in the clinker-based
cement from somewhere else tothe ready-mix site or to the
ready-mix plant and you wouldhave a silo of our locally
produced material to that.
So you're saving logisticscosts on at least 30, 20, 30 the
(40:41):
of the actual cement that youuse right, right, okay, so
that's.
Speaker 1 (40:45):
That's exactly the point that I was trying to clear
up, because when you keptsaying locally, um local product
or local source materials, I'mlike, well, how you can do that
if you don't have a thing inevery single place, you're not
not gonna be local anymore.
So yeah, so that's the longerterm vision is that correct.
Speaker 2 (41:01):
Um, yeah, I'd say it's probably the mid be local
anymore.
So, yeah, so that's the longerterm vision, is that correct?
Yeah, I'd say it's probably themidterm vision, because I think
the constraint here is then,when we're looking at the large
facilities, we need to have ahigh quality feedstock, which
would be electric arc furnacelag and so on, and there we're
solving a problem for twoindustries at the same time,
which is the cement industry isgetting higher capacity.
(41:22):
The steel industry is alsogetting rid of the electric arc
furnace lag, which currentlythey don't have any use for.
So we're helping both of themsolve an issue that they have.
Once we run out of electric arcfurnace lag or fly ash to work
with, we're going to have to usesome of the material that has a
lower carbon absorption, whichis essentially clays, and clays
(41:45):
you have readily availablealmost everywhere.
The supply of that is fairlywide, so that you can have like
one plant, maybe in Colorado,shipping in Denver, maybe
shipping out the cement north,and then, let's say you have a
(42:05):
cement plant in there, you wouldship out the product to Boulder
and then you would have an SEMproduction from carbon upcycling
in Boulder, just supplementingthat material.
Right, that makes sense, andI'm using some other examples
because I think Vancouver isalready quite well supplied, but
some of the more rural areas,yeah, it might be difficult,
(42:28):
right.
Speaker 1 (42:29):
All right.
So where is this all going interms of this focus on the low
carbon footprint with buildingsin general, the low carbon
footprint with buildings ingeneral?
Like is this you you hear?
I mean it is around the termsof regulation obviously
(42:53):
environmental regulation thatwhere you're sitting today
you've got a lot of differentmindsets there on deregulating
things and you know if to to thewhole drill, baby drill
paradigm of just do whatever ittakes to get stuff done.
Do you see this uncoupling overa short period of time?
Or do you see, like the, arethe advocates changing their
tune on this?
(43:13):
I mean, how is this all?
Or are they just ignoring someof this, this sort of buzz and
noise that's around onderegulation?
Speaker 2 (43:20):
buzz and noise that's around on deregulation, no so I
think regulation is veryhelpful to incentivize change in
certain areas of the economythat are kind of not so prone to
be risk takers.
However, I do think that for anybusiness to be successful, it
needs to be independent ofregulatory incentives or
anything like that.
It needs to be independent ofregulatory incentives or
(43:42):
anything like that, and I dobelieve that the biggest change
driver for this is going to bethe consumer side of things
Consumer awareness.
The more they become aware thatthis needs to be a circular
economy.
You can't tear down a buildingand then just kind of send it to
a landfill.
You need to find a way torecycle that demolition waste.
(44:06):
For example, it's wasteful tobe importing clinker all the way
from Vietnam to be used inbuilding cement core.
That doesn't make a lot ofsense.
You should have locally sourcedbuilding materials for that as
well.
Speaker 1 (44:16):
So clinker, that's like an eponym.
Is that like a name for aparticular type of chemical?
What is that?
Yeah, that's like a.
Is that like an eponym?
Is that like a name for aparticular type of chemical?
Speaker 2 (44:23):
What is that?
Yeah, that's funny.
So the process chain goes youextract limestone, you calcinate
it in a kiln and it becomesclinker.
You grind clinker and mix itwith some other things like
gypsum, and it becomes cementand then cement.
so the clinker is a precursor ofcement, of ordering of portland
(44:46):
cement and then you mix cementportland cement, with sand,
gravel and stone and water andit becomes the, the concrete
that we use.
So the cement is a binder.
I see uh in the concrete andput clinker is the key raw
material in Portland cementGotcha.
And so you can displace clinker, because when you have the
(45:09):
calcination process for clinker,that's when you have all the
CO2 emissions.
That's a chemical reaction.
That is the dirtiest part I see.
And you can replace clinker byhaving some other cement-used
material, like pozzolan and someother materials, which is
exactly what we're producingright.
Speaker 1 (45:28):
So what is the?
I saw that you have multiplelocations for the company, so is
it just like a more of a globaltaking over the world of
sustainable, concrete production?
Is that how things are going?
You guys have your big masterplan Rubbing your hands.
Speaker 2 (45:51):
Yeah, no, we're not looking for billions of dollars
right now.
No, our ambition is to have acapacity of about 2 million tons
per annum by 2028, more or less, which means capturing about 4
million tons of CO2 by 2030.
The way to do that is youobviously want to start by the
(46:15):
low-hanging fruit, where itmakes the most sense for
everyone, and so right now we'refocusing on Canada and the US
because of the demandconstraints and we believe that
that demand you're going to haveincreased demand for building
materials, and the footprint,the supply side of it, is
(46:36):
unlikely to change because youhave so many regulatory hurdles
from an emissions point of view,from just building new plants
cement plants it's unlikely tohappen in North America.
So the supply base is going tostay the same, but the demand
keeps on increasing, right.
So we believe that that's ano-brainer from any point of
view and we believe that it's agood way to make a difference
(46:56):
and have an impact just bylooking at the US and Canada
first.
The second step, which is Europe, which is our second area of
focus.
I think the European riddle istougher to crack because I think
there's a lot of regulatoryframeworks in place that
(47:16):
incentivize this type oftechnology, but the demand for
building materials in Europe isdeclining and you have excess
capacity already.
So if we set up a new plant inEurope, you're only making the
overcapacity problem worse,right?
So we need to be a little bitmore creative on how we actually
(47:38):
work with partners.
And it's probably transformingexisting sites from a
clinker-based cement to 100% ofour technology, so it's a more
complicated market landscape.
I think.
After that we're going to belooking at some of the emerging
(48:00):
markets and there's a lot ofexciting business case from a
financial point of view, butalso from a market perspective,
that we can actually create alot of value in some of the
emerging markets.
But that's years down the road.
So, yes, we're going to takeover the world and make it a
better place with a lower carbonfootprint, but it's not in the
(48:23):
near term, unfortunately.
Speaker 1 (48:24):
Well, that's cool.
I mean, at least you're in abusiness where you can sleep at
night.
You're doing good things forthe planet, so that's cool.
All right, so people can gethold of you on LinkedIn and also
your website iscarbonupcyclingcom.
Speaker 2 (48:41):
Is that right, that's correct.
Yeah, and we're excited to talkto people that have new ideas
and other solutions.
I think we're a company thatlikes to collaborate and our
technology fits within a spacethat it's not exclusive of other
technologies, so we can workwith other technology developers
(49:02):
as well.
Yeah, so excited to hear fromanyone who has any questions.
Speaker 1 (49:08):
Perfect.
Well, that's a perfect ending.
Thank you very much.
I have now been educated inyour business, which is always
cool.
I learned so much from doingthese podcasts.
So, yes, never, never, neverstop learning.
So that's great, all right.
Well, thank you very much.
Pleasure chatting with you.
Speaker 2 (49:28):
Thank you, james.
Thanks for having me Greatopportunity and lovely to meet
you.
Love your podcast.
Thank you likewise.
Speaker 3 (49:36):
Well, that does it for another episode of the Site
Visit.
Thank you for listening.
Be sure to stay connected withus by following our social
accounts on Instagram andYouTube.
You can also sign up for ourmonthly newsletter at
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about the Site Visit podcast andSitemax, the job site and
(49:58):
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Sitemax is also the engine thatpowers this podcast.
All right, let's get back tobuilding.
Marcus, you are calling in today from San
Antonio, Texas.
What's it like down in Texasright now?
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Oh, it's fairly warm, not as sunny as I would have
liked to, but it's warm, kind ofnice, easygoing.
It's an interesting townbecause there's not a lot going
on in San Antonio, but there arestill four or five big cement
plants around it.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
So it's a huge construction market.
Yeah, it's just an interestingplace to be.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
That's cool.
Are cyber trucks safe downthere?
Are they getting spray painted?
Speaker 2 (00:35):
They're pretty safe.
I'd say, yeah, that's cool,yeah, it's definitely a
different environment, very,very good.
So yeah, it's definitely adifferent environment.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Very, very good.
So we're going to be talkingabout the company, your chief
revenue officer, of CarbonUpcycling Very, very interesting
concept for a business andwe're going to be talking all
about the stack technology stackyou guys have, how you guys
implement things where you'reoperating, et cetera, what the
(01:06):
value proposition is andgenerally just to educate people
on, you know, this sort of umreasonably new, I would say
concept in, uh, in dealing withthis kind of uh um substance,
substrate, material, whateveryou want to call it.
So, yeah, it's going to be kindof interesting.
(01:27):
Are you pretty excited aboutthis field of work?
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Yeah, I'm very excited.
Actually, I spent a long partof my career working in
investment banking, which is abit of making deals left and
right and just putting companiestogether, and then I spent
several years working in thecement industry as a head of
(01:53):
corporate strategy at Holcim andI have to say, when you're on
the investment banking side ofthings, you're clearly enabling
things and there's a value forthat, yeah, but you're just kind
of making money, passing moneyleft and right.
You're not actually buildinganything, right, whereas if
(02:13):
you're in the cement kind of inthe building materials industry,
you're building stuff.
So that's.
It's really exciting to bejoining carbon upcycling,
because it's not only on thebuilding side of things but it's
building it with a purpose.
Right, you're doing low carbonmaterials.
You're enabling a change in anindustry that has been very risk
averse for many years.
So, yeah, very excited and veryexcited to be here with you on
(02:36):
your podcast.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Awesome, and you're two months into this position
with the company with thecompany?
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Yes, so I've been working with them for a short
time.
I've followed this space forseveral years.
I've kept in touch with thebuilding materials industry and
I've seen some of theinnovations that have been going
on.
There's a lot of very excitingstuff out there, but I think
this one is at the verge or atthe transition from an advanced
(03:06):
technology startup to a kind ofa deployment growth company.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
Right on.
Okay, well, I'm excited to hearabout this because I love
detail.
So, as the chief revenueofficer, you're going to give me
as much detail as anon-engineer can give us, or a
non-chemical engineer, for thatmatter.
So, yeah, let's get into it asa non-engineer can give us, or a
non-chemical engineer for thatmatter.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
So, yeah, let's get into it.
Welcome to the Site.
Visit Podcast Leadership andperspective from construction
With your host, james Faulkner.
Business as usual, as it hasbeen for so long.
Now that it goes back to whatwe were talking about before and
hitting the reset button, youknow you read all the books.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
You read the evening, you read scaling up, you read
good to great.
You know I could go on.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
We've got to a place where we found the secret serum
we found the secret potion wecan get the workers in.
We know where to get them.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
One time I was on a job sale for a while and
actually we had a semesterconcrete and I ordered like a
Korean-Finnish patio.
Oh fun, did you say?
Chill these days.
I was down at Dallas and a guyjust hit me up on LinkedIn out
of the blue and said he wasdriving from Oklahoma to Dallas
to meet with me because he heardthe Faber-Connect platform on
your guys' podcast.
(04:18):
Own it, crush it and love it.
And we celebrate these valuesevery single day.
Let's get down to it.
Let's do it.
And we celebrate these valuesevery single day.
Let's get down to it.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
All right.
So, marcus, tell me all aboutthis company and then we're
going to talk about you and yourbackground, because I just want
for everyone to sort of hookthem in to know what we're
talking about here.
Give us like the Kohl's NotesDo you remember what that is?
I know some of.
Give us like the Cole's NotesDo you remember what that is?
I know some of the youngergenerations like Cole's Notes.
What the hell is Cole's Notes?
(04:49):
Well, for us.
it's just going to be that verysuccinct overview barbecue pitch
on what you're doing, what yourtechnology does.
So if you could just give that,give us the leg elevator pitch
of what it is Right.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
So what the technology does is it produces a
supplementary cementitiousmaterial, which is called an sem
, which is another type of uhcementitious material.
So if you think of portlandcement, it's one type of cement.
Yeah, the romans obviously hadtheir own type of cement, which
was a post-holandic rock crushedinto a small size.
(05:24):
What we're doing is we're alsoactivating certain waste
materials or materials that arerelatively inert, and making
them active so that they canreact with water the same way
that a cement would reactDifferent chemical properties
and so on, but it's essentiallythe same concept behind it.
And so the company, what itdoes is it developed a
(05:48):
technology that is relativelypeople hate it when I call it a
simple technology, but it's asimple concept behind it.
But it activates things like,for example, well, materials
that have been used in thecement industry for a long time,
like slag and fly ash, thathave certain properties.
We're able to activate thingsthat have lower activity levels,
(06:11):
like electric arc furnace slagor fly ash that has been
stockpiled for many years, andactivate it so that you can use
it in the industry.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
When you say activate , that seems like a sort of an
industry term.
What does that mean to you guys?
How do you?
When you say activate, thatseems like a sort of an industry
term.
What does that?
What does that mean to you guys, and what is it?
What?
How do you describe when yousay activate?
Speaker 2 (06:29):
So um, think of it as as um like, if you put clay,
you mix clay with water, it justbecomes moth, right.
When you mix a gypsum withwater, it becomes a hard, it
hardens, right.
So that's the reactivity thatyou would have in a material.
So certain, certain materialshave different levels of
reactivity and it the binding uh, force, uh, or the binding
(06:56):
strength that it has when, whenit's the uh after a certain
while, it differs from materialto material.
Okay, uh, so ordinary Portlandcement reactivity, if it has a
reactivity level, let's say thatyou can achieve 100% of
strength in 28 days withPortland cement.
Some materials might have 80%of that strength at 28 days and
(07:16):
some might have slightly aboveof that, like 120% strength
compared to the Portland cement,percent strength compared to
the Portland cement.
So what we're doing is we'retaking materials that have maybe
a 60, 50 percent strengthreactivity and bringing them to
a level where they can have 110,120 percent strength reactivity
.
So you can essentiallysubstitute some of the clinker
(07:41):
in the Portland cement with ourmaterials.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
Okay.
So just to get this straight,because you know I don't know
your industry much.
We know about construction, butthis is like down to the
details.
So in your, typically, what wesee and everyone's used to is a
pump truck shows up on the jobsite.
It's filling in a slab, that'sthe deal.
(08:06):
Or filling in forms.
Okay, what happens back beforethat pump truck shows up?
I mean, yeah, on theengineering side, obviously
there's.
You know what kind of mixyou're doing, you know what kind
of concrete you're doing.
So you guys are are creatingthe products that are in that
stack of what they would bechoosing to use.
(08:28):
Correct, right, okay, so thatproduct.
Then your customers areobviously the concrete companies
that are ordering product fortheir clients.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Right.
So the way that the industryworks is when you have a job
site, you would have the readymix truck, pull up and just cast
everything and it's beingpumped by someone else, but the
ready mix truck is the one thatbrings the mix to the job site,
right, yeah, that ready mixtruck comes from a ready mix
plant that usually has a coupleof silos with different
(09:03):
materials.
They usually have sand, gravel,water and then they have a silo
for either blended cement,ordinary cement or the SEMs.
So fly ash slag, for example,and think of it as a gas station
, right, the truck goes in andjust kind of pulls the different
(09:23):
ingredients from each of thesilos, mixes it and takes it to
the job site.
Gotcha, okay.
The part that we're working onis when you have ordinary
Portland cement.
That's a cemented space withclinker which is made in a
calcined clean kiln that has ahuge amount of emissions in it.
The SEM is a byproduct from thesteel industry or the power
(09:48):
plant power industry.
So either fly ash from thepower plants or slag from the
steel industry that they grind,and it has some of the same
characteristics of the Portlandcement.
They can kind of add some ofthat supplementary cementitious
material to the mix and displaysthe use of cement right.
So what we're doing is kind ofthat SEM silo we're producing a
(10:13):
material that has some of thesame qualities of what they're
currently using so that they candisplace more of the cement
side.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
I see Okay.
More of the cement side, I seeOkay.
So the value proposition hereis many fold, obviously, but I'm
just going to take a few stabsat the dark here.
So first is the environmentalimpact of that material and what
(10:44):
that You're recapturing thatcarbon in that product.
Is that correct?
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Right.
So the reason why this isimportant, I think there's a
couple of elements.
The first thing that comes tomind, obviously, is the carbon
capture that you're doing in theprocess and that has to do a
little bit with our technology,and this came to being from a
vision of trying to capturecarbon carbon emissions and make
(11:13):
it into a product that has somevalue added.
So that's why it's carbonupcycling.
We're upcycling some wastestreams into something that's
usable, value adding Now, butthe big value of it is think of
the.
I'm going to focus a little biton the US cement industry or
building materials industry.
The US consumes about 120million tons per annum of cement
(11:39):
.
Out of those, about 30%.
So about yeah, let's say 30million 20, 25 million of that
is imported cement that comesfrom overseas.
About five of that comes fromCanada, but 20 million are
coming from overseas.
When you look at cement, thevalue per ton of cement is
(12:00):
actually very low.
So when you're buying cement, ahuge amount of what you're
paying for is logistics right.
So if you're importingsomething from Vietnam or from
Turkey all the way to the US andthen you're having all the
supply chain and then you takeit to the job site.
A lot of that is just kind ofwasted.
Forget about the carbonfootprint.
(12:23):
It's a lot of wasted money fromimporting material that is low
value to the job site.
So what we're enabling is wecan enable locally sourced
materials so that you candisplace some of those imports
locally sourced materials thathave a lower carbon footprint,
not only from the logistics sideof view, but also from the
(12:44):
process that we implement tomanufacture those materials.
I think one of the big problemsthat we're seeing is obviously
the carbon footprint gets a lotbetter, but we're displacing
current imports.
That, yeah, if you're lookingat it today, it's one third or
28% of it, but demand is growingright, so that's that's going
(13:06):
to be an increasing number overtime.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Okay, that makes sense.
So do you need that?
Do you need the?
When you say that the locallysourced?
Locally sourced to what?
To your manufacturing facilityor for the project?
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Um, no, so, um, what we, what we do, is we, um, we
develop, the develop theprojects together with the
cement partners.
So we don't actually go with theready mix partners.
There's some exceptions to therule, obviously, but usually we
try to work with the cementpartners to help them solve the
issue that they have today,which is both the carbon
(13:42):
footprint as well as thecapacity.
What we do is we have a linethat is, an add-on production
facility to what they alreadyhave.
We take up CO2 from their flustack, put it in our process, we
put in some feedstock, which iseither clay, fly ash or slack,
we activate it and then thatfeedstock, or that product that
(14:04):
comes out of our process, getsblended in with our cement or
gets shipped out separately asan additive.
Let's call it Okay, right, sowhen we're talking about locally
sourced material, we're talkingabout using fly ash or electric
car furnace lag that isavailable close to our cement
(14:25):
partners, or clay, for example.
Right, so it's not somethingthat you have to haul hundreds
of miles to get to our facility,it's something that is usually
already there.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Excuse me, bad cold, but I didn't cancel.
That's the main part.
So, yeah, let's, can we just?
Obviously now, I think peoplehave an understanding of you
know what the core stack is,what you guys do, and I want to
jump back into that after.
So, how did you get into this?
So you've been in this positionfor a couple of months now.
(15:03):
Yeah, and it's just thefinancial element of it and the
environmental impact thatattracted you to doing this.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
No, I think so.
I worked in the cement industryfor a while.
I know a lot of the peopleinvolved in some of the other
companies, and this is onecompany that came up through
connections and it was somethingthat, hey, this company has
developed a technology that isalready good to go.
I've had a lot of contacts withother startups in the past and
(15:39):
a lot of it is still researchand development, and so this one
seemed like it was already at astage where you could make a
difference, and I had beenworking in private equity for
the last five years and I justkind of yeah, was looking for
one area where I could stillmake an impact out of something
(16:00):
right and yeah, so that's alittle bit of serendipity how we
connected through the grapevineI guess the industry at the end
of the day, is not so big.
You know each other it seemedlike the right moment to jump in
and try to make an impact.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
Are some of the other companies, like Heidelberg, et
cetera.
Are they trying to do somesimilar things to you guys like
the Heidelberg, et cetera?
Speaker 2 (16:24):
Are they trying to do some similar things to you guys
?
So, yeah, I think so.
I think everyone is trying tofigure out a way to kind of
solve this problem.
So the biggest problem I thinkthey're trying to solve
worldwide is clearly the CO2impact, and that's probably
something that they're concernedabout in the mid to long term,
that they know that they need toreduce emissions, uh, and and
(16:48):
to stay competitive so takeeverybody, take everybody
through that more in detail interms of emissions and concrete
so, yeah, so when you build um.
So emissions is a big part ofthe cement industry because of
the limestone, the way that youactivate it is you take the
carbon out of the limestone andthat gets emitted as CO2.
(17:12):
So it's not only from thecombustion of fossil fuels in
the cement kiln, but it's alsothe chemically.
You need to emit a lot of CO2 toget to the clinker that
ultimately makes cement, andthen cement is a glue that binds
the sand and gravel together inconcrete, and then concrete is
obviously what you build thebuildings out of, or at least
(17:34):
the structural elements in someplaces.
And so the more buildings youhave, obviously the more cement
that you need, the more cementthat you need.
If you're producing it withordinary portless cement, then
you need to have clinker, andthat emits a lot of CO2.
So to the extent that you cancapture some of that CO2 from
(17:55):
emissions, as well as displacethe use of clinker, you're
actually reducing the carbonfootprint from the cement
industry, and today I think,depending on the like, the
cement industry emits about 800kilograms per every ton of
cement that is manufactured.
So if you're looking at 120million tons of consumption in
(18:15):
the US, that's roughly yeah, howmuch, I won't do the math right
now, but it's 900 million tonsof CO2 that are being pumped up
in the air every year.
So that's kind of the biggestissue out there from an
environmental point of view andkind of the motivation for us I
think everyone at Carbon andUpcycling too to tackle it.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
Right so is there this is probably a dumb question
and I think all listeners arelike geez James, you're asking a
really dumb question here.
Probably a dumb question, and Ithink all listeners are like
geez, james, are you asking areally dumb question here?
But they're um, as the concreteis setting, is there an
emission, emission element there?
So as as the, as the concreteis like, let's say it's a
(18:59):
concrete slab, for instance,pouring the slab, obviously you
know it's mixed, it's in aliquid or not liquid, but it's
in a pumpable form, and then ithardens.
Is that hardening process there?
Is that producing an emissionat that stage?
Speaker 2 (19:18):
No, it is not so.
The no, no, no, so it's so,it's nothing significant.
But the the uh no, so it's so,it's nothing significant.
But the carbon footprint thatyou have is on the logistics
side, but mostly on theproduction of clinker-based
cement.
Gotcha okay, and actuallythere's a couple of solutions
(19:39):
that actually so concrete willreabsorb some CO2 or over once
it's cast in place, and thereare some solutions that inject
CO2 during the casting stage sothat you can absorb some of that
CO2 at the job site.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
Interesting.
Okay yeah, okay yeah, because Ikeep hearing things about that.
I'm just trying to sort of putthose pieces together Now, so
it's similar.
It's basically the impact allthe way from the logistics and
chemical processes in the pastin the manufacturing than it is
on the delivery, right, right.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
And I'd say about 95% of it, or I'd say maybe 85% of
it is in the manufacturing of it, I see, and then some of it in
the logistics.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
Okay.
So now when we talk aboutcompanies that are doing
construction projects, that haveenvironmental standards around
them, in having LEED Gold andLEED Platinum, all that kind of
stuff, so what is thoseparticular types of programs?
(20:52):
How does your product knit intowhat certain requirements there
are for those programs?
Speaker 2 (20:59):
to what certain requirements there are for those
programs.
So the one thing I want topreamble that with is that the
regulatory part of it isrelatively complex.
You have a lot of standardsthat are dictating what you can
do and what you cannot do in ajob site, and I think that's,
for good reason, One of thethings that you cannot do in a
(21:21):
job site and I think that's, forgood reason, One of the things
that you would do.
When you have a LEAF building,for example, you're going to
dictate some of the energyconsumptions that it has, what
the carbon footprint it might be, and so on.
A lot of that usually doesn'ttrickle down to the material
side.
You can prescribe that it'sbuilt with low carbon cement, so
a cement that has a lowercarbon footprint than
(21:43):
traditional, ordinary Portlandcement.
But that usually doesn't getall the way back to the material
because at the end of the dayyou have to go through many
parties that have different riskprofiles, right?
So the general contractor isgoing to have like if an
architect says well, you have tobuild this building with low
carbon cement, Now the generalcontractor has to find a ready
(22:05):
mix producer that has low carboncement, and the ready mix
producer might not have it onhand.
So it goes to the cementcompany and says well, I have a
project for which I need lowcarbon cement now.
So that doesn't necessarilyhappen in sync because the
timing is off and whatever it is.
(22:26):
And when you look at the amount,the share of material in a
built environment, it'srelatively small.
Right, Like you would have.
I don't know how much of abuilding's cost is concrete, but
let's say 10%.
Out of that 10%, maybe 3%, ismaterial cost and the rest is
labor and other stuff.
(22:46):
If you make a savings on that3%, if you need to add 10%
carbon premium or if you can buyit at a discount of 10%, it
really doesn't move the needlefor the whole building, Whereas
the risk of trying something newyou put at risk the whole
building.
You have to tear it down.
(23:08):
So the risk of adversity in thechain is absurdly high.
We have no incentives to trysomething new.
So when you go to a buildingcode that says leave and you
start defining some of thestandards, it won't have.
I think the last part that ittrickles down to is material, I
see, or the building materials.
So it's a kind of verydifficult industry to change
(23:29):
from the demand side.
I think you need to change itfrom the supply side as well or
have business incentives thatalign across the chain.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of developers are are,
you know, leading with a messagethat you know the buildings
that they do and the mandatesthey have as a company is to
have more sustainable buildings,et cetera.
Also, when you have a lot ofgovernment programs, there are,
(24:01):
you know, government buildings,institutions, et cetera, and on
top of that sometimes when it's,um, you know First Nations land
as well, um, there's this other, there's another environmental
requirement, uh, to be the bestpossible, all materials, et
cetera.
Requirement to be the bestpossible, all materials, et
(24:22):
cetera.
You know, it kind of reminds meand it's interesting that you
know Heidelberg obviously beingin the business.
The other business that theywere in for years obviously is
in printing.
You know the printing press andyou know I remember a time I
know we're totally off topichere, but there's a relative
vector here is, you know, withprinting brochures, letterhead
(24:43):
paper.
It used to be like, okay, well,you know, do you have that
little recycling logo on therewith the tree there was, I think
it was fsc or something likethat.
There was a little and thatmeant something.
Right, if you had your businesscard that had that little logo
on it, you're like, okay, well,I guess now that means that you
did actually care about theplanet before you went and
printed your you know 5 000business cards that you're
(25:04):
handing out that are kind oflike garbage, with information
on them.
So are we?
Are you seeing that now, um,with your product when you're
pitching that, or your salespeople are, is there?
Is there a you could call it abuilding altruism there, where
people are wanting to do thingsfor that reason?
Speaker 2 (25:26):
yeah, absolutely.
I I think there's uh, you havethis, no new technologies or new
technology changes.
You have this curve of earlyadopters and kind of later um
and we're.
We're seeing that across theindustry where you have cement
companies branding low carboncement already and that's
trickling down to the ready mixand at the same time in the
(25:47):
value chain you have architectsand designers and engineers that
are specifying those types ofcements and it goes a little bit
to the branding that ultimatelygoes to the end consumer.
And right now the people thatare adopting those low-carbon
standards are large corporationsor government departments that
say well, I want to build adepartment of transportation, I
(26:10):
will build all the highways withlow-carbon cement.
And that specificationobviously moves the needle,
because now it's not one singlejob site for a single-family
home that looking for alow-carbon cement.
Now you have to kind ofretrofit the silos that you have
at the ReadyMix plant and theblending units that you have at
(26:30):
the cement plant to accommodatethat Department of
Transportation request, right,right.
And so once you have that inplace now, you start putting it
towards the end customer.
I see, once you have that inplace now, you start putting it
towards the end customer.
So, for example, we're workingtogether with a ready mix
company out of Calgary calledBurnco.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
And they're one of the main players, right.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
Yeah, and it's amazing because we have a unit
that has been manufacturingabout 50, 60, 80 tons per month
at this pilot facility inCalgary and we've worked with
Bernco for that and we'vebranded low-carbon cement for
end customers.
We've poured it on several jobsites and what we do is we say,
(27:12):
well, when they ask forlow-carbon cement, we clearly
supply it with your materials.
But whenever they're not askingfor low-carbon cement, we still
use your materials.
But whenever they're not askingfor low-carbon cement, we still
use your materials because atthe end of the day, it makes
industrial sense to have.
It's a material that is good touse, increases volume, lowers
our costs.
And, yeah, people are notasking for it, but we're still
(27:32):
supplying it.
Right?
Speaker 1 (27:33):
Okay, so that ReadyMix company.
When you guys implement aprogram with them, what's the
setup for them?
How does that work With Burnco,for instance?
Your technology is obviously.
There's some hardware elementto that.
What's on site there?
Can you take us through thatpart?
Speaker 2 (27:51):
Yeah, absolutely.
For cement partners and readymix partners, this is a fairly
transparent technology becauseat the end of the day, they're
buying a product that looks andfeels and smells the same way
that their current products do.
So it's as if you're buying atruck full of cement and just
putting it up in a in a silo,right, okay, that's it.
So they, when they starttesting these things, they need
(28:14):
to have a separate silo for forthis and they need to do a lot
of tests.
And when you're talking to aremix producer that has, they
typically are not assophisticated, chemistry wise
and so on, as a cement, as a bigcement plant, right.
So the the curve to adoptionwith them is much longer than
than with a cement partner.
(28:35):
So you need to do a lot oftests and you need to wait 128
days and look at the materialwhether it breaks or doesn't
break.
But once they've adopted it,it's a seamless integration.
They just have a silo and weput our material in there.
We're also working with CRH inbuilding out a project in
Mississauga, outside of Toronto.
(28:57):
That's a 30,000 ton facilitythat is being built today With
the cement partners.
What we do is we do a lot ofmaterial testing and once it's
set up it blends at the job site, at their plant, and then it
gets shipped out to the readymix plants and they won't even
know that it's a low carboncement.
I mean, if you don't tell them,right, you need to clearly tell
(29:20):
them, but for them it's a lowcarbon cement.
I mean, if you don't tell them,right, you need to clearly tell
them, but for them it's kind ofa one-to-one replacement of
what they already do.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
Okay, so I guess what I'm trying to sort of get my
bearings around is you know ifpeople will go to your website,
carbonupcyclingcom, and you goto your technology tab
carbonupcyclingcom and you go toyour technology tab, um, you,
you have, you talk about this.
(29:47):
Cut co2 is modular.
It's a skid mounted system.
Um, take us through that, likewhat is what is this?
What is that communicating hereon your website?
Speaker 2 (29:56):
um, all right, so you're gonna make me go back to
to our website and see if it'supdated.
But essentially, what thetechnology does is the people
will not buy the technology upfront from us, because these are
facilities that cost maybe 30to 60 million for a unit Gotcha.
And so what we have to do is wehave to work with large
(30:20):
partners for a long-termpartnership agreement.
So, with a cement partner, itmight be a 10-year to 20,
30-year partnership where wecommit to finding the feedstock
that will be activated,committing to having that
feedstock and that's it.
So they have to adjust all thechemistry process and all of
(30:40):
that for that, and then we havea consistent material running
through that facility, right,okay, and so we typically have
an offtake agreement with themat either a tolling fee or a
licensing fee or whatever it is,so that we produce materials
for them and then they blend itto the end customer.
I see so the technology, what wefound and what's really
(31:04):
attractive about it is we havethree of the largest cement
companies invested in ourcompany.
We have CEMEX, crh and TitanCement out of Greece, and what
they really like about it isthat it's a bit of a plug and
play technology, they, they justit's.
It's something that's verysimilar to what they already
have introduces this innovativeidea of using CO2 to mineralize
(31:30):
the materials but it'sessentially something that they
can just kind of plug and playand put right next to their, to
their cement plant.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
Gotcha, okay.
So you guys have a couple ofbusiness lines going on here and
being his chief revenue officer, obviously this is where the
revenue is coming from, right?
So you have the sale ofmaterials.
First of all, that you guys useyour technology that you have
created in order to make thosean upcycle from locally sourced
(31:59):
other materials.
Correct, got that All right?
So, and that is locally,depending on where your
facilities are, for now, untilyou have your technology in some
of these other partners'facilities, correct, correct?
Speaker 2 (32:19):
Yes, correct, that's about it.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
Okay, sorry, I'm just trying to figure it all out
here, yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
Yeah, and I think that's an important part of our
business proposition.
I think that we're looking atthis.
It's a company that isdeploying technology that we've
tested around with differentpartners and we believe it works
and it has significant benefits.
90% of it, or 90% of revenuetoday, would be from selling
(32:51):
material that we produce.
It has a low carbon footprint,but it's about selling material
at a comparable cost to whatthey already have.
You're not paying for a carbonpremium in it, you're paying
same production cost.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
Right that you currently have right.
So that is so.
When it comes to the developermaking decisions with the
engineers on what materials canbe used for that project, the
consideration of using some ofyour materials could be having
the benefit of a low carbon mixor composite obviously, because
(33:30):
you're only part of it.
So that composite mix there youcould plug in yours and it
would be the similarenvironmental benefits of a low
carbon.
But the low carbon wouldtypically be more expensive and
yours comes at a price pointsimilar to if you were not using
(33:50):
any kind of environmentallyfocused components.
Is that correct?
Speaker 2 (33:56):
Yes, absolutely.
That's the gist of it, the gistOur revenue model.
The more that we scale up, thebetter technology will become
and, I think, the lower the costthat we will be able to yield.
But also we're betting on thefuture that there's going to be
(34:17):
some value from reducing thatcarbon footprint.
Yeah, so we're settingourselves up so that we can
capture some of that value aswell going forward, which is, if
you look at the carbon marketstoday are not as developed as we
would like them to be.
But if you look at the Europeanmarket, for example, you have
(34:38):
the carbon credits or carbonallowances that cost today about
80 euros per ton or 70 eurosper ton of CO2 emitted and we
believe that that cost is goingto increase to about 300.
And that regulatory frameworkis probably not going to change
(35:02):
that.
That framework is somethingsimilar will be introduced in
across the world, because Ithink the, the uh, the co2
reduction imperative is going tobe something that people are
going to be more aware of.
Okay, um.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
So can you tell me how that?
Um once that the calculationhas been done in terms of volume
, how much concrete is beingused, with your product included
or as part of that stack?
Um the how do the credits workwith that?
So do you get carbon credit forusing that particular thing, or
is it tax break?
How does, how does it all work?
Speaker 2 (35:33):
so there's, there's two.
Uh, there's two type of creditsand like, or different types of
credit depending on thegeography right uh and you have
some voluntary carbon marketsand some mandatory carbon taxes.
Okay, so the eu what theeuropean union, the way it works
, is that it told the umindustrial emitters uh, you're
(35:55):
gonna have to improve yourcarbon footprint by a certain
date and I'm gonna tax you forevery ton of co2 that you're
emitting.
Okay, so that you don't gobankrupt day one, I'm going to
give you an allowance.
So I'm going to, I'm going togive you a certain amount of
free tax credits so that you can, if you meet one ton of co2,
you can use one of those credits, right?
(36:16):
Okay, and that that amount thatI'm giving you is, I'm going to
reduce it year over year afteryears until it comes down to
zero.
So eventually, you eitherreduce your carbon footprint or
you're going to have to go outto the market, buy that credit
and give it to me.
So I think it's a smart way ofworking.
There's a lot of misalignedincentives in it.
(36:40):
There's a lot of misalignedincentives in it.
Obviously, all of theseregulatory things that people
put in place usually haveunintended consequences, but
essentially it is promoting akind of a smaller footprint of
the industry.
Now, in some of the othergeographies, like Canada, you
can go for a carbon credit.
That's on a voluntary basisthat you can buy two types of
(37:01):
credits.
One of them is for absorbingCO2 out of the atmosphere, and
that's kind of the capturingelement of it, and the other
part is the abatement of.
So you're stopping an industryfrom producing a CO2 zone that
they would have producedotherwise.
So we're capturing a bit ofboth.
(37:23):
We're actually capturing someCO2 out of their flue stack,
which is about 10% to 15% byweight of the product that we
manufacture.
So I wouldn't say it's aninsignificant part, but it's a
smaller share of the CO2footprint impact that we have.
And the biggest one is thatwe're displacing 30% to 40% of
(37:45):
the clinker-based cement.
So we're abating 30% to 40% ofCO2-heavy material that you
would have been producing.
And those two credits havedifferent values to it and
there's different markets andways that you can capture it.
But essentially we're bettingthat the price and the
(38:07):
regulation around those creditsis going to increase over time
and that we're going to be ableto capture some of it.
So today, essentially, we'remaking a profit from like any
other cement company would be,by selling tons of our material,
but eventually a larger shareof our profit is going to come
from being able to impact theCO2 footprint of the industry.
(38:31):
Right, okay.
Speaker 1 (38:33):
So longer term.
There was a couple of thingsthat I can't quite square, so
I'm just going to ask you thesequestions.
So if I'm doing a building inVancouver, for instance, and you
don't have a ReadyMix companyhere with your product in their
silo, a, I can't use yourproduct, obviously, but B if I
(38:55):
did want to use it and thatReadyMix company would contact
you and say we'd like to be partof your program, we'd like to
use your products, and theywould do that.
They would get your materials,but you would be shipping those
materials correct, just likethey would otherwise.
But from where?
Speaker 2 (39:14):
Well, it'll depend a little bit.
I think over time our ambitionis to grow our footprint so that
we can cover most of the demandcenters.
Right, and we're going probablygonna go kind of in the first
stage with the cement partner.
So existing cement plants thatare operating, yeah, um, and
then help them increase theircapacity.
(39:36):
So if you have a one millionton per annum plant, we would
add on maybe 200,000, 300,000tons of additional capacity to
that so that you would alreadybe buying a blended cement that
has a lower carbon footprint orhave both of them shipped
separately and then you mix themat the readiness plant or at
the job site.
(39:56):
I see, okay, at the readinessplant, rather Right, okay.
And I think that longer term isgoing to evolve into a hub and
spoke model so that we also saveon the logistics side.
But if you don't have a, acement plant nearby, then we
would have one unit close to youwith the, co-located with
someone who's emitting co2.
We would be capturing their co2stack and grabbing some
(40:20):
material that is locallyavailable, like a clay,
activating it with that and youwould bring in the clinker-based
cement from somewhere else tothe ready-mix site or to the
ready-mix plant and you wouldhave a silo of our locally
produced material to that.
So you're saving logisticscosts on at least 30, 20, 30 the
(40:41):
of the actual cement that youuse right, right, okay, so
that's.
Speaker 1 (40:45):
That's exactly the point that I was trying to clear
up, because when you keptsaying locally, um local product
or local source materials, I'mlike, well, how you can do that
if you don't have a thing inevery single place, you're not
not gonna be local anymore.
So yeah, so that's the longerterm vision is that correct.
Speaker 2 (41:01):
Um, yeah, I'd say it's probably the mid be local
anymore.
So, yeah, so that's the longerterm vision, is that correct?
Yeah, I'd say it's probably themidterm vision, because I think
the constraint here is then,when we're looking at the large
facilities, we need to have ahigh quality feedstock, which
would be electric arc furnacelag and so on, and there we're
solving a problem for twoindustries at the same time,
which is the cement industry isgetting higher capacity.
(41:22):
The steel industry is alsogetting rid of the electric arc
furnace lag, which currentlythey don't have any use for.
So we're helping both of themsolve an issue that they have.
Once we run out of electric arcfurnace lag or fly ash to work
with, we're going to have to usesome of the material that has a
lower carbon absorption, whichis essentially clays, and clays
(41:45):
you have readily availablealmost everywhere.
The supply of that is fairlywide, so that you can have like
one plant, maybe in Colorado,shipping in Denver, maybe
shipping out the cement north,and then, let's say you have a
(42:05):
cement plant in there, you wouldship out the product to Boulder
and then you would have an SEMproduction from carbon upcycling
in Boulder, just supplementingthat material.
Right, that makes sense, andI'm using some other examples
because I think Vancouver isalready quite well supplied, but
some of the more rural areas,yeah, it might be difficult,
(42:28):
right.
Speaker 1 (42:29):
All right.
So where is this all going interms of this focus on the low
carbon footprint with buildingsin general, the low carbon
footprint with buildings ingeneral?
Like is this you you hear?
I mean it is around the termsof regulation obviously
(42:53):
environmental regulation thatwhere you're sitting today
you've got a lot of differentmindsets there on deregulating
things and you know if to to thewhole drill, baby drill
paradigm of just do whatever ittakes to get stuff done.
Do you see this uncoupling overa short period of time?
Or do you see, like the, arethe advocates changing their
tune on this?
(43:13):
I mean, how is this all?
Or are they just ignoring someof this, this sort of buzz and
noise that's around onderegulation?
Speaker 2 (43:20):
buzz and noise that's around on deregulation, no so I
think regulation is veryhelpful to incentivize change in
certain areas of the economythat are kind of not so prone to
be risk takers.
However, I do think that for anybusiness to be successful, it
needs to be independent ofregulatory incentives or
anything like that.
It needs to be independent ofregulatory incentives or
(43:42):
anything like that, and I dobelieve that the biggest change
driver for this is going to bethe consumer side of things
Consumer awareness.
The more they become aware thatthis needs to be a circular
economy.
You can't tear down a buildingand then just kind of send it to
a landfill.
You need to find a way torecycle that demolition waste.
(44:06):
For example, it's wasteful tobe importing clinker all the way
from Vietnam to be used inbuilding cement core.
That doesn't make a lot ofsense.
You should have locally sourcedbuilding materials for that as
well.
Speaker 1 (44:16):
So clinker, that's like an eponym.
Is that like a name for aparticular type of chemical?
What is that?
Yeah, that's like a.
Is that like an eponym?
Is that like a name for aparticular type of chemical?
Speaker 2 (44:23):
What is that?
Yeah, that's funny.
So the process chain goes youextract limestone, you calcinate
it in a kiln and it becomesclinker.
You grind clinker and mix itwith some other things like
gypsum, and it becomes cementand then cement.
so the clinker is a precursor ofcement, of ordering of portland
(44:46):
cement and then you mix cementportland cement, with sand,
gravel and stone and water andit becomes the, the concrete
that we use.
So the cement is a binder.
I see uh in the concrete andput clinker is the key raw
material in Portland cementGotcha.
And so you can displace clinker, because when you have the
(45:09):
calcination process for clinker,that's when you have all the
CO2 emissions.
That's a chemical reaction.
That is the dirtiest part I see.
And you can replace clinker byhaving some other cement-used
material, like pozzolan and someother materials, which is
exactly what we're producingright.
Speaker 1 (45:28):
So what is the?
I saw that you have multiplelocations for the company, so is
it just like a more of a globaltaking over the world of
sustainable, concrete production?
Is that how things are going?
You guys have your big masterplan Rubbing your hands.
Speaker 2 (45:51):
Yeah, no, we're not looking for billions of dollars
right now.
No, our ambition is to have acapacity of about 2 million tons
per annum by 2028, more or less, which means capturing about 4
million tons of CO2 by 2030.
The way to do that is youobviously want to start by the
(46:15):
low-hanging fruit, where itmakes the most sense for
everyone, and so right now we'refocusing on Canada and the US
because of the demandconstraints and we believe that
that demand you're going to haveincreased demand for building
materials, and the footprint,the supply side of it, is
(46:36):
unlikely to change because youhave so many regulatory hurdles
from an emissions point of view,from just building new plants
cement plants it's unlikely tohappen in North America.
So the supply base is going tostay the same, but the demand
keeps on increasing, right.
So we believe that that's ano-brainer from any point of
view and we believe that it's agood way to make a difference
(46:56):
and have an impact just bylooking at the US and Canada
first.
The second step, which is Europe, which is our second area of
focus.
I think the European riddle istougher to crack because I think
there's a lot of regulatoryframeworks in place that
(47:16):
incentivize this type oftechnology, but the demand for
building materials in Europe isdeclining and you have excess
capacity already.
So if we set up a new plant inEurope, you're only making the
overcapacity problem worse,right?
So we need to be a little bitmore creative on how we actually
(47:38):
work with partners.
And it's probably transformingexisting sites from a
clinker-based cement to 100% ofour technology, so it's a more
complicated market landscape.
I think.
After that we're going to belooking at some of the emerging
(48:00):
markets and there's a lot ofexciting business case from a
financial point of view, butalso from a market perspective,
that we can actually create alot of value in some of the
emerging markets.
But that's years down the road.
So, yes, we're going to takeover the world and make it a
better place with a lower carbonfootprint, but it's not in the
(48:23):
near term, unfortunately.
Speaker 1 (48:24):
Well, that's cool.
I mean, at least you're in abusiness where you can sleep at
night.
You're doing good things forthe planet, so that's cool.
All right, so people can gethold of you on LinkedIn and also
your website iscarbonupcyclingcom.
Speaker 2 (48:41):
Is that right, that's correct.
Yeah, and we're excited to talkto people that have new ideas
and other solutions.
I think we're a company thatlikes to collaborate and our
technology fits within a spacethat it's not exclusive of other
technologies, so we can workwith other technology developers
(49:02):
as well.
Yeah, so excited to hear fromanyone who has any questions.
Speaker 1 (49:08):
Perfect.
Well, that's a perfect ending.
Thank you very much.
I have now been educated inyour business, which is always
cool.
I learned so much from doingthese podcasts.
So, yes, never, never, neverstop learning.
So that's great, all right.
Well, thank you very much.
Pleasure chatting with you.
Speaker 2 (49:28):
Thank you, james.
Thanks for having me Greatopportunity and lovely to meet
you.
Love your podcast.
Thank you likewise.
Speaker 3 (49:36):
Well, that does it for another episode of the Site
Visit.
Thank you for listening.
Be sure to stay connected withus by following our social
accounts on Instagram andYouTube.
You can also sign up for ourmonthly newsletter at
sitemaxsystemscom slash the sitevisit, where you'll get
industry insights, pro tips andeverything you need to know
about the Site Visit podcast andSitemax, the job site and
(49:58):
construction management tool ofchoice for thousands of
contractors in North America andbeyond.
Sitemax is also the engine thatpowers this podcast.
All right, let's get back tobuilding.
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