Cement-making is energy-intensive. The spiralling cost of fossil fuels over the past two decades, combined with a move towards improved environmental performance, has led the industry to turn to alternative fuels to part-replace fossil fuels, such as coal and petcoke, to heat cement kilns. These are more sustainable and offer considerable benefits, including reduced emissions and energy costs, they saves fossil fuels for the future and recover energy from waste, thereby reducing the need for landfill.

By cutting the burning of coal and petcoke, alternative fuels also help to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide. In doing so, they reduce climate change.

While CEMEX plants operate well within their emission limits, experience shows that performance improves further when using alternative fuels. Cement kilns operate at temperatures at which steel would melt. That, combined with the length of time which fuels spend in the kiln, means that the process releases their energy while completely and safely consuming them.

Alternative fuels have been successfully used in cement kilns for decades. In the UK, alternative fuels used include secondary liquid fuels, scrap tyres, paper, packaging and household waste, meat and bone meal and sewage sludge pellets.

For information about CEMEX's use of alternative fuels in the UK, please use the links below.

In this section

• The UK's waste problem
• Alternative fuels trial process
• About Climafuel
• About tyres
• About Secondary Liquid Fuel (SLF)
• Alternative fuels in Germany