Environmental Impacts of Cement Production: A Statistical Analysis

Abstract

The attention to environmental impacts of cement production has grown fast in recent decades. The cement industry is a significant greenhouse gases emitter mainly due to the calcinations of raw materials and the combustions of fuels. This paper investigates on the environmental performances of cement production and on the identification of factors driving emissions. For this purpose, a sample of 193 different recipes of gray cement produced in Italy from 2014 to 2019 according to the European standard EN 197-1. This paper identifies the consumption impact categories (e.g., fossil fuels, renewable and non-renewable secondary fuels) that explain the assessment of the Global Warming Potential, one of the most crucial impacts of cement production. Having regard to the overall examined dataset and each cement type, a set of predictive models is implemented and evaluated. A similar approach has been adopted to produce accurate predictive models for further environmental impact categories that quantify emissions to air. The obtained results provide important information that can support cement producers to develop low-impacting cement recipes.