Economy & Market

The Green Revolution

Published

5 months ago

November 20, 2025

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MM Rathi, Joint President – Power Management, Shree Cement, discusses the 3Cs – cut emissions, capture carbon and cement innovation – that are currently crucial for India’s cement sector to achieve Net Zero goals.

India’s cement industry is a backbone of growth which stand strong to lead the way towards net zero. From highways and housing to metros and mega cities, cement has powered India’s rise as the world’s second-largest producer with nearly 600 million tonnes annual capacity. Yet this progress comes with challenges: the sector contributes around 5 per cent of national greenhouse gas emissions, while also facing volatile fuel prices, raw material constraints, and rising demand from rapid urbanisation.
This dual role—driving development while battling emissions—makes cement central to India’s Net Zero journey. The industry cannot pause growth, nor can it ignore climate imperatives. As India pursues its net-zero 2070 pledge, cement must lead the way. The answer lies in the 3Cs Revolution—Cut Emissions, Cement Innovation, Capture Carbon. This framework turns challenges into opportunities, ensuring cement continues to build India’s future while aligning with global sustainability goals.

Cut: Reducing emissions, furnace by furnace
Cement production is both energy- and carbon-intensive, but India has steadily emerged as one of the most efficient producers worldwide. A big part of this progress comes from the widespread use of blended cements, which now account for more than 73 per cent of production. By lowering the clinker factor to around 0.65, the industry is able to avoid nearly seven million tonnes of CO2 emissions every year. Alongside this, producers are turning to alternative fuels and raw materials—ranging from biomass and municipal waste to refuse-derived fuels—to replace conventional fossil fuels in kilns.
Efficiency gains also extend to heat and power. With over 500 MW of waste heat recovery systems already installed, individual plants are now able to generate 15–18 MW of electricity directly from hot exhaust gases that would otherwise go to waste. On the renewable front, the sector is targeting about 10 per cent of its power needs from solar and wind by FY26, with a further 4–5 GW of capacity expected by 2030. To ensure that this renewable power is reliable, companies are signing round-the-clock supply contracts that integrate solar and wind with battery energy storage systems (BESS). Grid-scale batteries are also being explored to balance the variability of renewables and keep kiln operations running without interruption.
Even logistics is being reimagined, with a gradual shift away from diesel trucks toward railways, waterways, and CNG-powered fleets, reducing both emissions and supply chain congestion. Taken together, these measures are not only cutting emissions today but also laying the foundation for future breakthroughs such as green hydrogen-fueled kiln operations.

Cement: Innovations that bind
Innovation is transforming the way cement is produced and used, bringing efficiency, strength, and sustainability together. Modern high-efficiency plants now run kilns capable of producing up to 13,500 tonnes of clinker per day. With advanced coolers and pyro systems, they achieve energy use as low as 680 kilocalories per kilogram of heat and just 42 kilowatt-hours of power per tonne of clinker. By capturing waste heat, these plants are also able to generate 30–35 kilowatt-hours of electricity per tonne, bringing the net power requirement down to only 7–12 kilowatt-hours—a major step forward in energy efficiency.
Grinding technology has also taken a leap. Next-generation mills consume about 20 per cent less power while offering more flexible operations, allowing producers to fine-tune processes quickly and reduce energy costs. At the same time, the use of supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs) such as fly ash, slag and calcined clays is cutting clinker demand without compromising strength. New formulations like Limestone Calcined Clay Cement (LC3) go even further, reducing emissions by nearly 30 per cent while delivering stronger, more durable concrete.
Digitalisation is playing its part as well. Smart instrumentation, predictive maintenance, and automated monitoring systems are helping plants operate more smoothly, avoid costly breakdowns, and maintain consistent quality while saving energy. Together, these innovations not only reduce emissions but also enhance durability, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness, proving that sustainability and performance can go hand in hand.

Carbon: Building a better tomorrow
Even with major efficiency gains, most emissions from cement come from the chemical process of turning limestone into clinker—emissions that cannot be avoided without carbon capture. To address this, the industry is moving forward on several fronts. Carbon Capture, Utilisation and Storage (CCUS) pilots are underway, aiming to trap CO2 at the source and convert it into useful products such as construction materials and industrial chemicals.
At the same time, companies are embracing circular practices. Rainwater harvesting, wastewater recycling, and the use of alternative raw materials are becoming more common, especially as traditional sources like fly ash become scarcer. Policy and market signals are reinforcing this transition: efficiency mandates, green product labels and emerging carbon markets are pushing producers to accelerate the shift toward low-carbon cements.
Ultimately, large-scale carbon capture will be essential if the sector is to reach true net-zero
cement, turning today’s unavoidable emissions into tomorrow’s opportunities.

The Horizon: What’s next
By 2045, India’s cities are expected to welcome another 250 million residents, a wave of urbanisation that will push cement demand nearly 420 million tonnes by FY27 and keep rising in the decades ahead. The industry is already preparing for this future with a host of forward-looking measures. Trials of electrified kilns are underway to replace fossil fuel-based heating, while electric trucks are being deployed both in mining operations and logistics to reduce transport emissions. Inside the plants, AI-driven systems are optimising energy use and operations, and circular economy models are turning industrial by-products from other sectors into valuable raw materials for cement production. On the energy front, companies are moving toward 100 per cent renewable power, supported by advanced battery storage to ensure reliability around the clock.
This vision goes beyond incremental improvements. The 3Cs Revolution—Cut, Cement, Carbon is about building stronger, smarter, and more sustainable foundations for India’s growth. Once seen as a hard-to-abate emitter, the cement sector is now positioning itself as a cornerstone of India’s climate strategy. By cutting emissions, driving innovations and capturing carbon, it is laying the groundwork for a net-zero future.
India’s cement sector is already among the most energy-efficient in the world, proving that growth and responsibility can go hand in hand. By cutting emissions, embracing innovation, and advancing carbon capture, we are not just securing our net-zero future—we are positioning India as a global leader in sustainable cement.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
MM Rathi, Joint President – Power Management, Shree Cement, comes with extensive expertise in commissioning and managing over 1000 MW of thermal, solar, wind, and waste heat power plants.

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TSR Will Define Which Cement Companies Win India’s Net-Zero Race

Published

2 days ago

April 27, 2026

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Jignesh Kundaria, Director and CEO, Fornnax Technology

India is simultaneously grappling with two crises: a mounting waste emergency and an urgent need to decarbonise its most carbon-intensive industries. The cement sector, the second-largest in the world and the backbone of the nation’s infrastructure ambitions, sits at the centre of both. It consumes enormous quantities of fossil fuel, and it has the technical capacity to consume something else entirely: the waste our cities cannot get rid of.

According to CPCB and NITI Aayog projections, India generates approximately 62.4 million tonnes of municipal solid waste annually, with that figure expected to reach 165 million tonnes by 2030. Much of this waste is energy-rich and non-recyclable. At the same time, cement kilns operate at material temperatures of approximately 1,450 degrees Celsius, with gas temperatures reaching 2,000 degrees. This high-temperature environment is ideal for co-processing, ensuring the complete thermal destruction of organic compounds without generating toxic residues. The physics are in our favour. The infrastructure is not.

Pre-processing is not the support act for co-processing. It is the main event. Get the particle size wrong, get the moisture wrong, get the calorific value wrong and your kiln thermal stability will suffer the consequences.

The Regulatory Push Is Real

The Solid Waste Management (SWM) Rules 2026 mandate that cement plants progressively replace solid fossil fuels with Refuse-Derived Fuel (RDF), starting at a 5 per cent baseline and scaling to 15 per cent within six years. NITI Aayog’s 2026 Roadmap for Cement Sector Decarbonisation targets 20 to 25 per cent Thermal Substitution Rate (TSR) by 2030. Beyond compliance, every tonne of coal replaced by RDF generates measurable carbon reductions which is monetisable under India’s emerging Carbon Credit Trading Scheme (CCTS). TSR is no longer a sustainability metric. It is a financial lever.

Yet our own field assessments across multiple Indian cement plants reveal a sobering reality: the primary barrier to scaling AFR adoption is not waste availability. It is the fragmented and under-engineered pre-processing ecosystem that sits between the waste and the kiln.

Why Indian Waste Is a Different Engineering Problem

Indian municipal solid waste is not the material that imported shredding equipment was designed for. Our waste streams frequently exceed 40 per cent to 50 per cent moisture content, particularly during monsoon cycles, saturated with abrasive inerts including sand, glass, and stone. Plants relying on imported OEM equipment face months of downtime awaiting proprietary spare parts. Machines built for segregated, low-moisture waste fail quickly and disrupt the entire pre-processing operation in Indian conditions.

The two most common failures we observe are what I call the biting teeth problem and the chewing teeth problem. Plants relying solely on a primary shredder reduce bulk waste to large fractions, but the output remains too coarse for stable kiln combustion. Others attempt to use a secondary shredder as a standalone unit without a primary stage to pre-size the feed, leading to catastrophic mechanical failure. When both stages are present but mismatched in throughput capacity, the system becomes a bottleneck. Achieving the 40 to 70 tonnes per hour required for meaningful coal displacement demands a precisely coordinated two-stage process.

Engineering a Made-in-India Answer

At Fornnax, our response to these challenges is grounded in one principle: Indian waste demands Indian engineering. Our systems are built around feedstock homogeneity, the holy grail of kiln stability. Consistent particle size and predictable calorific value are the foundation of stable kiln combustion. Without them, no TSR target is achievable at scale.

Our SR-MAX2500 Dual Shaft Primary Shredder (Hydraulic Drive) processes raw, baled, or loosely mixed MSW, C&I waste, bulky waste, and plastics, reducing them to approximately 150 mm fractions at throughputs of up to 40 tonnes per hour. The R-MAX 3300 Single Shaft Secondary Shredder (Hydraulic Drive), introduced in 2025, takes that primary output and produces RDF fractions in the 30 to 80 mm range at up to 30 tonnes per hour, specifically optimised for consistent kiln feeding. We have also introduced electric drive configurations under the SR-100 HD series, with capacities between 5 and 40 tonnes per hour, already operational at a leading Indian waste-processing facility.

Looking ahead, Fornnax is expanding its portfolio with the upcoming SR-MAX3600 Hydraulic Drive primary shredder at up to 70 tonnes per hour and the R-MAX2100 Hydraulic drive secondary shredder at up to 20 tonnes per hour, designed specifically for the large-scale throughput that higher TSR ambitions require.

The Investment Case Is Now

The 2070 Net-Zero target is not a distant goal for India’s cement sector. It starts today, with decisions being made on the plant floor.

The SWM Rules 2026 are already in effect, requiring cement plants to replace coal with RDF. Carbon credit markets are opening up, and coal prices are not going to get cheaper. Every tonne of coal a cement plant replaces with waste-derived fuel saves money on one side and generates carbon credit revenue on the other. Pre-processing infrastructure is no longer just a compliance requirement. It is a business investment with a measurable return.

The good news is that nothing is missing. The technology works. The waste is available in every Indian city. The government has provided the policy direction. The only thing standing between where the industry is today and where it needs to be is the commitment to build the right infrastructure.

The cement companies that move now will not just meet the regulations. They will be ahead of every competitor that waits.

About The Author

Jignesh Kundaria is the Director and CEO of Fornnax Technology. Over an experience spanning more than two decades in the recycling industry, he has established himself as one of India’s foremost voices on waste-to-fuel technology and alternative fuel infrastructure.

Concrete

WCA Welcomes SiloConnect as associate corporate member

Published

2 weeks ago

April 13, 2026

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The World Cement Association (WCA) has announced SiloConnect as its newest associate corporate member, expanding its network of technology providers supporting digitalisation in the cement industry. SiloConnect offers smart sensor technology that provides real-time visibility of cement inventory levels at customer silos, enabling producers to monitor stock remotely and plan deliveries more efficiently. The solution helps companies move from reactive to proactive logistics, improving delivery planning, operational efficiency and safety by reducing manual inspections. The technology is already used by major cement producers such as Holcim, Cemex and Heidelberg Materials and is deployed across more than 30 countries worldwide.

Concrete

TotalEnergies and Holcim Launch Floating Solar Plant in Belgium

Published

2 weeks ago

April 13, 2026

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TotalEnergies and Holcim have commissioned a floating solar power plant in Obourg, Belgium, built on a rehabilitated former chalk quarry that has been converted into a lake. The project has a generation capacity of 31 MW and produces around 30 GWh of renewable electricity annually, which will be used to power Holcim’s nearby industrial operations. The project is currently the largest floating solar installation in Europe dedicated entirely to industrial self-consumption. To ensure minimal impact on the surrounding landscape, more than 700 metres of horizontal directional drilling were used to connect the solar installation to the electrical substation. The project reflects ongoing collaboration between the two companies to support industrial decarbonisation through renewable energy solutions and innovative infrastructure development.