Decarbonising UK Concrete: The Path to Net Zero Carbon Construction

Protecting UK Manufacturing While Reducing Carbon Emissions

The UK concrete and cement sector stands at a critical juncture in the fight against climate change. Between 1990 and 2018, the industry achieved a remarkable 53% reduction in absolute carbon dioxide emissions, outpacing the broader UK economy's decarbonisation efforts. Despite this progress, the threat of carbon leakage looms large over the sector's future. Carbon leakage occurs when manufacturing moves abroad due to unequal carbon pricing across borders, resulting in lost jobs and increased reliance on imported materials that simply shift emissions responsibility to other countries. Currently, cement imports represent 26% of the UK market, and without protective measures, this figure could rise substantially.

The precursor to carbon leakage is investment leakage, where UK assets are gradually run down before manufacturing is offshored entirely. This process often goes unnoticed until jobs have already been lost, making it crucial for policymakers to act proactively rather than reactively. The concrete and cement industry contributes approximately £16 billion to UK GDP and directly employs 81,000 people while supporting 3.5 million additional jobs. Safeguarding this economic contribution requires coordinated policy intervention to level the playing field with international competitors. Government support must address the cumulative impact of high domestic electricity prices and carbon costs that put UK manufacturers at a competitive disadvantage.

To combat these challenges, the industry calls for several critical interventions from government. Free allocation of carbon dioxide allowances in the emissions trading system must remain effective until more robust mechanisms can be implemented. The electricity cost disparity between UK producers and their international competitors needs to be narrowed by addressing indirect carbon costs passed through electricity prices. Additionally, the British Industry Supercharger proposals promise to increase the Energy Intensive Industries exemption from 85% to 100%, exempt these industries from Capacity Market costs, and provide network charge discounts. Ultimately, border adjustments on imports that account for unequal international carbon prices will be essential to fully protect UK manufacturing while maintaining the integrity of climate commitments.

For construction projects requiring expert guidance on sustainable concrete solutions, MPS Concrete serves as a vetted Sika expert, ensuring optimal results through advanced product knowledge and application expertise. Working with certified specialists guarantees that decarbonisation initiatives are implemented effectively without compromising structural performance or durability.

Funding Visibility and Infrastructure Planning for Industrial Decarbonisation

Achieving net zero targets requires unprecedented levels of capital investment and operational spending across energy-intensive industries. While government support has successfully driven decarbonisation in the power sector, similar policy and financial backing is now essential for trade-exposed, energy-intensive industries like concrete and cement. The government has already demonstrated commitment by supporting hydrogen technology trials for cement production, but businesses need longer-term visibility of available funding to make informed investment decisions. Without this clarity, companies face considerable uncertainty about whether their decarbonisation investments will receive adequate support, creating a significant barrier to progress.

The current focus on two industrial clusters in northwest England, Wales, and the east coast represents an important starting point, but it leaves 50% of UK industrial emissions outside these designated areas. Cement plants and concrete production facilities scattered across the nation require access to the same decarbonisation infrastructure being planned for cluster locations. This infrastructure includes a doubling or tripling of electricity grid capacity, hydrogen pipeline networks, and carbon dioxide transport and storage systems. The absence of national plans for developing this critical infrastructure beyond cluster areas hinders long-term investment decisions for dispersed industrial sites. Companies need to understand when and how they will access low-carbon energy sources and carbon capture technologies to plan multi-decade transformation strategies effectively.

Carbon capture, usage, and storage technology represents a particularly pressing concern for cement manufacturers. Beyond the current Track 1 cluster projects, there is insufficient clarity about what funding mechanisms will be available for CCUS deployment. Businesses investing in these technologies face substantial upfront costs and considerable risk, especially if their projects fail to receive government consent and support. This uncertainty undermines investor confidence and slows the pace of technological adoption. The industry urgently requires visibility of business models for CCUS projects beyond Phase 2 cluster sequencing, along with early certainty on associated funding before companies incur significant development costs. Clear forward planning of industrial decarbonisation strategies beyond the two focus clusters will enable informed long-term investment decisions across the entire sector.

The transition to net zero will also create substantial employment opportunities in the low-carbon technology and fuels sectors, particularly around hydrogen production and utilisation. These new jobs will require industrial skillsets for designing, operating, and maintaining novel plant technology to ensure optimal performance without compromising product quality. By providing clear visibility of funding pathways and comprehensive infrastructure planning at a national level, government can accelerate the transition while supporting job creation and skills development throughout the country.

Measuring What Matters: Whole Life Carbon Assessment

The construction industry's approach to carbon measurement needs fundamental reform to drive meaningful environmental outcomes. An exclusive focus on upfront embodied carbon fails to capture the full environmental impact of buildings and infrastructure across their entire lifecycle. This narrow perspective overlooks the critical relationship between embodied carbon and operational energy use over decades of service life. It also neglects important social outcomes such as fire protection, occupant safety and comfort, and resilience to flooding and water damage. A truly holistic environmental approach must consider these broader impacts alongside carbon metrics to ensure that short-term carbon reductions don't inadvertently create long-term problems.

Whole life cycle analysis provides a comprehensive framework for understanding carbon impacts from raw material extraction through construction, operation, maintenance, repair, reuse, and end-of-life scenarios including recyclability after demolition. This methodology recognises that materials with higher upfront embodied carbon may deliver superior performance over decades, resulting in lower total carbon footprint when all factors are considered. The Greater London Authority's London Plan 2021 provides an excellent precedent by requiring designers and constructors to calculate whole life carbon for their projects. This forward-thinking approach should serve as a template for national government policy, ensuring consistent standards across all regions and project types.

Carbon measurement must also align with international standards such as EN 15804 and EN 15978 to ensure comparability and accuracy. When embodied carbon is assessed, it should be measured across entire buildings, assets, or systems rather than isolated components to avoid unintended consequences from material substitutions. Critically, embodied and operational carbon must never be evaluated separately, as this creates the risk of optimising one measure while inadvertently increasing the other. The transition to a net zero society demands this more sophisticated understanding of holistic impacts. Climate adaptation and resilience must be recognised as integral components of sustainability and carbon reduction strategies, not separate considerations.

The construction industry also needs to account for concrete carbonation—the natural process by which concrete absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere throughout its lifetime, during use, at end of life, and in secondary applications. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recognised this phenomenon in its Sixth Assessment Report, acknowledging concrete's role as a carbon sink. Research conducted by the Mineral Products Association on behalf of government has developed methodologies to calculate and measure carbon dioxide absorption by concrete in UK buildings and infrastructure. Incorporating this carbon sequestration into national greenhouse gas accounting will provide a more accurate picture of the concrete sector's net carbon impact and inform the UK's climate change reporting obligations.

Government Procurement as a Catalyst for Low-Carbon Innovation

As the largest construction client in the United Kingdom, government wields enormous influence over market demand for sustainable building materials. This purchasing power represents a strategic opportunity to accelerate adoption of low-carbon cement and concrete technologies that are already manufactured and readily available across the country. By specifying these materials for public sector projects, government can demonstrate leadership, drive market transformation, and support the creation and preservation of green manufacturing jobs in established UK industries. The development of the Procurement Bill and Construction Playbook indicates significant progress in this direction, though consistent and transparent implementation across the entire public sector in England and Wales remains essential.

The London 2012 Olympics provided a compelling precedent for government-driven sustainable procurement. Responsible sourcing of materials was embedded into construction procurement processes, demonstrating that major projects can prioritise environmental credentials without compromising performance or budget constraints. This same principle can now be applied to promote lower-carbon concrete adoption while simultaneously supporting local economies and reducing transportation emissions. Over 95% of UK concrete is produced domestically, making it a genuinely local material compared to timber (67% imported) and steel (60% imported). Prioritising locally produced, lower-carbon construction materials reduces embodied carbon from transportation while strengthening supply chain resilience and supporting regional employment.

Government projects also offer excellent opportunities for collecting and benchmarking carbon performance data across the construction lifecycle. Currently, data on how built assets are delivered, operated, managed, and perform energetically throughout their lifetimes is not consistently collected or effectively analysed to improve future outcomes. Public sector construction can become the catalyst for transforming how the industry collects, processes, manages, analyses, and uses data to inform better decision-making. Sharing carbon benchmark data and best practices from government projects would accelerate learning across the private sector and drive continuous improvement in sustainable construction practices.

When specifying sustainable concrete solutions for major projects, partnering with certified experts ensures optimal outcomes. MPS Concrete's status as a vetted Sika expert means access to cutting-edge low-carbon concrete technologies and application knowledge. Sika's range of sustainable concrete admixtures and solutions enables significant carbon reductions without compromising structural performance, making them ideal for government projects seeking to demonstrate environmental leadership. Working with experienced specialists like MPS Concrete ensures these advanced materials are properly specified, mixed, and applied to achieve intended carbon savings while maintaining the durability and safety standards essential for public infrastructure.

Taking Full Responsibility: Consumption-Based Carbon Accounting

UK net zero legislation contains a significant blind spot that undermines the credibility of domestic climate action. Current carbon accounting focuses exclusively on territorial emissions—those produced within UK borders—while ignoring consumption-based emissions from imported goods and materials. This framework creates a perverse incentive where emissions targets can be partially met by closing UK manufacturing facilities and importing the same products from abroad, simply shifting environmental responsibility to other countries. For concrete and cement, this issue is already substantial, with imports and net imports representing 2.2 million tonnes of manufactured cement and approximately 1.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide that UK accounting currently overlooks.

The Office for National Statistics has documented the divergent trend between UK territorial emissions and consumption-based emissions, highlighting how the country is increasingly offshoring its environmental responsibility. This approach contradicts the UK Government's stated commitment to tackle climate change and damages the credibility of domestic climate policies on the international stage. To provide an honest account of progress toward net zero, the UK must implement carbon accounting measures that capture both production emissions from domestic manufacturing and production emissions embedded in foreign imports consumed within the country. Setting a national net zero goal for consumption emissions alongside existing territorial targets would ensure that climate objectives cannot be met simply by relocating production overseas.

Climate diplomacy and international negotiation regarding carbon pricing remain important tools for addressing global emissions, but they cannot substitute for immediate domestic action to protect UK manufacturing. Without comprehensive carbon accounting that includes consumption emissions, the UK risks undermining decades of progress in industrial decarbonisation while claiming success based on incomplete metrics. This would represent not only an environmental failure but also an economic one, as green manufacturing jobs and associated economic value would be lost to overseas competitors operating under less stringent environmental standards.

Improving the accuracy of UK emissions reporting requires that national greenhouse gas accounting include the carbon dioxide permanently captured and stored through concrete carbonation. This natural process, where concrete absorbs atmospheric carbon throughout its service life and after demolition, represents a significant carbon sink that current accounting methods ignore. Embedding this scientifically validated methodology into policy would provide a more complete picture of the concrete sector's net carbon impact while ensuring that UK climate reporting meets international obligations. By implementing these comprehensive accounting measures, the UK can lead by example, demonstrating genuine commitment to environmental responsibility while protecting domestic manufacturing capabilities and jobs.