Construction Chemicals is expanding its efforts to deploy new additives for low-carbon cement and concrete. These low-carbon technologies open up tremendous opportunities for co-development with new partners in fast-growing markets and to accelerate Saint-Gobain’s profitable growth in construction chemicals. Two partnerships illustrate this move: First, Saint-Gobain has participated in the fund raising of Fortera, a startup that has developed a process for making low-carbon cement by recycling CO2 emitted during production. Cement production currently accounts for around 8% of the world’s annual CO2 emissions. By investing in Fortera, through NOVA, its venture capital activity, Saint-Gobain is supporting cutting-edge technologies that curb CO2 at source. Founded in 2019, Fortera has developed a groundbreaking technology that integrates with existing cement plants, leveraging their limestone resources. Through the patented ReCarb process, Fortera is able to mineralize CO2, reducing direct carbon emissions of existing cement plants by 70%. This paves the way to net zero carbon cement production (scope 1 and 2) when the process is combined with green energy sources.

As a shareholder, the Saint-Gobain Group has also begun support for Ecocem, European leader in low-carbon cement technologies, in its development and marketing of new cement technologies for large-scale application. Its groundbreaking ACT technology, compatible with all supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs) has just obtained a European Technical Assessment. Based on published environmental product declarations, the carbon footprint of the ACT product has been assessed to be 70% lower than the carbon footprint of an average CEM II cement sold within the European market.