Speaking to BusinessLine on the sidelines
of the COP26 climate conference here today, Singhi said that Dalmia Cement
would invest ₹10,000 crore in capacity expansion, taking the capacity from 33
million tonnes to 50 million tonnes by 2023-24. By 2031, 100 per cent of the
cement it would produce would be “low carbon cement”. The bamboo plantation is
to aid this transition, he said.
Carbon offsets
Singhi said that Dalmia Cement is in talks with two
companies — Carbon Clean Solutions of the UK and Aler Solutions of Norway — for
technology for ‘carbon capture and utilisation’. In August the ADB, after a
study, had reported that the company’s plan to implement a 5 lakh tonne per
annum CCU project at its plant in Ariyalur, Tamil Nadu, was viable. Dalmia
Cement is in talks with some companies, including Unilever, to utilise the
carbon dioxide from its plants, Singhi said.
The company is seeking carbon offsets for its green
measures, as its CCU programme would call for investments of ₹3,000-crore (not
included in the ₹10,000-crore expansion outlay).
“CCU is the climate vaccine,” he said.
Green cement production
Singhi said that the company was already the “world’s
greenest cement producer” with an unmatched carbon footprint of 492 kg per
tonne of cement produced compared with the global average of 750–800 kg. In the
last two years, the company was able to reduce its fossil fuel consumption by
16 percent, he added.
Dalmia Cement is a member of the recently-formed First
Movers Coalition, a group of companies that have agreed to by low-carbon
products, even if they are more expensive. These products could be anything
from electric vehicles to low carbon steel.
It has adopted ‘science-based targets’ (alignment
of its greening measures with the global warming limiting targets), is part of
RE100 (companies that have avowed to use 100 per cent renewable energy by a
self-specified date) and practices ‘internal carbon pricing’ (adding the price
of carbon emitted as one of the items of cost). Courtesy: www.business-journal.in
