Lehigh Hanson has announced the launch of EcoCem®PLUS at its Edmonton cement plant in Alberta, Canada. EcoCemPLUS is an innovative blended Portland Limestone Cement (PLC) available in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Lehigh’s latest cement product provides strength and durability while significantly reducing the carbon footprint of concrete.
Along with supporting the company’s vision of sustainable cement and concrete, EcoCemPLUS provides the following benefits to its consumers:
EcoCemPLUS is produced by inter-grinding clinker, fly ash, limestone and gypsum. Combining materials at the Edmonton cement plant provides the highest level of quality control and assures customers, engineers and end-users consistent proportions.
EcoCemPLUS can outperform traditional HS cement in resisting sulfate attack, a common concern found throughout the prairies. Designated as HSLb by CSA (High Sulphate Limestone Blended), it is ideal for use in most applications.
All-in-one product reduces the need for additional silos and coordination of multiple deliveries at concrete plants and project sites.
Through Lehigh’s strong network of terminals and raw material supply, EcoCemPLUS provides customers a stable supply of cement and fly ash. Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) for EcoCemPLUS clearly states the immediate reduction in Global Warming Potential (GWP) versus other types of cement.
“The motivation behind the EcoCem brand of products is to reduce the embodied carbon of cement and concrete,” said Shawn McMillan, Vice President, Cement for Lehigh Hanson’s Canada Region. “The introduction of EcoCemPLUS to the Prairie market builds on our commitment to providing environmentally responsible types of cement that deliver excellent performance while dramatically reducing CO2 emissions.” EcoCemPLUS can lower the carbon footprint by more than 22% (-184kg CO2-eq) as compared to Lehigh’s General Use (GU) cement and 32% (-308.5kg CO2-eq) compared to the current industry average GU cement when comparing EPDs.
HeidelbergCement, Lehigh Cement’s global parent company, has committed to reducing 30% of its carbon emissions by 2025 and providing carbon-neutral concrete by 2050. EcoCemPLUS is the latest of several new products recently developed to help achieve those goals.
Lehigh Cement acknowledges the importance of transparency as a critical step in sustainability leadership. For this reason, Lehigh Cement has been developing and publishing Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) for its cement plants. “Much like food nutrition labels highlight calorific values, our plant and product-specific EPDs communicate the environmental impact through Global Warming Potential (GWP) for cement in a simple and easy-to-understand manner,” said Joerg Nixdorf, President of Lehigh Hanson’s Canada Region. “We were the first North American cement producer to create and publish a plant and product-specific EPD for our cement under the new and more stringent cement Product Category Rules (PCR). This work is providing concrete with the ability to reduce its embodied carbon in the built environment.”
In addition to the launch of EcoCemPLUS, Lehigh Cement is proud to announce it has also published product and plant-specific EPDs for all of its cement products produced at the Edmonton, Alberta plant. Lehigh Cement worked with Climate Earth to develop the EPDs.
Lehigh Hanson is committed to operating in a safe and environmentally responsible manner and will continue to actively advocate for the use of resilient construction materials while also supporting sustainable construction practices. The company strongly supports completing whole building life cycle assessments for improving upfront decision making on products used in the built environment.
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