Technology Roadmap Low-Carbon Transition in the Cement Industry

Projecting cement demand: 
Sensitivity analysis
The future demand for cement is estimated from 
data on gross domestic product (GDP) growth, per 
capita income, current cement consumption levels, 
regional cement demand saturation levels derived 
from historical regional cement demand intensity 
curves and resource endowments. Regional GDP and 
population projections are based on data from various 
sources (IEA, 2016b; IMF, 2016; UN DESA, 2015). 
Box 1: Scenarios used in this Technology Roadmap (continued)
system must be reached by 2100. The 2DS 
represents an ambitious and challenging 
transformation of the global energy system that 
relies on a substantially strengthened response 
compared to current efforts. 
The scenarios are based on technologies that 
are commercially available or at demonstration 
phase. Industrial technological shifts are a 
result of the minimisation of overall costs of 
production among available technologies 
as they reach successful commercialisation 
over time. The scenarios assume that non-
technical barriers to the deployment of new 
technologies are overcome, including social 
acceptance, ineffective regulatory frameworks 
and information deficits. The analysis does not 
assess the likelihood that these assumptions will 
be fulfilled, but it highlights that ambitious CO
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emissions reductions can only be realised with 
the collective contribution of all stakeholders: 
governments, industry and society.
These scenarios are not predictions. They are 
internally consistent analyses of cost-optimal 
pathways that may be available to meet energy 
policy objectives, given a certain set of techno-
economic assumptions.
Two cement demand variants have been developed 
to cope with the inherent uncertainty of projecting 
future material demand levels: a low-variability 
case and a high-variability case. The low-variability 
case is considered the future evolution of cement 
production that is most likely, and thus is considered 
as the reference case for the analysis. The high-
variability case has been developed by scaling 
up the relative variation of cement demand over 
time in different regions (either relative increase or 
decrease), to provide a sensitivity analysis on the 
cement production levels. 
The global analytical results discussed in this 
Technology Roadmap arise from the aggregation 
of analysing the net impact of the cost-optimal 
combination of the above-mentioned carbon 
mitigation levers within 39 specific regional 
contexts. Quantitative insights on this roadmap are 
discussed, focusing on the following aggregated 
regions: Africa, America, China, Eurasia, Europe, 
India, Middle East and Other Asia Pacific.
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The 
analysis is designed as an exercise that benefits 
from country/regional specific projects that gather 
detailed data (Box 2) and information on specific 
regional contexts. These will enrich the analytical 
results as well as the evolution of the demonstration 
and learning experiences from implementing 
emerging and innovative technologies.
6. See the Annex for regional definitions.

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