By Galen Simmons
Canadian Minister of Environment and Climate Change Steven Guilbeault was in St. Marys Monday afternoon to announce $2.2 million in support of St. Marys Cement Inc.’s innovative approach to reducing its carbon footprint.
Joined by London West MP Arielle Kayabaga, Guilbeault partook in a short tour of the St. Marys cement plant – part of the Votorantim Cimentos group – led by plant manager Alejandro Aviles and site environmental manager Kara Pelissero before making the funding announcement.
“When it comes to climate change, we all have to do our part; everyone whether you’re citizens, whether you’re government representatives or a member of parliament, but also industry,” Guilbeault said.
“And we’re very happy to be here to do this too-short visit of the St. Marys Cement plant, and very happy to be able to announce that the federal government is investing $2.2 million into this project that will help reduce the emissions of the plant here in St. Marys, help us achieve our pollution-reduction goal while at the same time creating good jobs, investing in good companies like the cement plant here so that Canada can continue to move forward in fighting climate change and supporting our communities, supporting our economy.”
With this funding, St. Marys Cement is installing new cement-kiln infrastructure that uses lower-carbon fuels, including discarded wood and plastics deemed unrecyclable by recycling-processing plants, to replace up to 30 per cent of the high-carbon fuels required for the manufacturing process. The innovative technology will cut more than 39,900 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions in 2030, the equivalent of taking more than 9,400 gas-powered cars off the road for a year.
As members of Canada’s Net Zero Challenge, St. Marys Cement is implementing a plan to transition its facilities and operations to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.
“We do have very ambitious targets for caron reduction, and there are many ways of achieving this reduction,” said Jorge Wagner, CEO of Votorantim Cimentos North America.
“One of the ways is replacing all the use of fossil fuels in our kilns with waste that has lower-carbon content. We have this target globally. It’s not just in St. Marys but in all of the operations we have in the world. We have the objective to reduce, and of course we’ve tried to find ways to make this project financially viable, and when we have support like in the case of Canada through the carbon tax when we get some grants, it gives us the ability to make the process more accelerated.”
This is just one of many projects funded through the federal government’s industrial-pricing system in Ontario and the revenue-return program called the Decarbonization Incentive Program (DIP), which re-invests revenues taken from heavy industry through the price on pollution and puts it toward eligible facilities for energy efficiency and emission-cutting projects.
So far, the industrial pollution-pricing program DIP has agreements in place to reinvest nearly $74.3 million into 18 emissions-reduction projects in Ontario, resulting in 274,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions reduced by 2030 with many more projects to come.
“Even before my days in politics, the cement industry and the Canadian Cement Association has been an ally,” Guilbeault said. “From day one, they recognized how important it is to fight climate change because of climate impacts, but also as a business model and responsible sector of our economy to ensure they’re doing their fair share. Obviously, it means working with government and ensuring governments are supporting companies that are willing to do these things and are stepping up to the plate to say, ‘We want to be part of the solution.’
“Obviously, producing cement pollutes, but we need it. So, we might as well work together to find ways to reduce as much as we can the pollution level while continuing to be able to benefit from the many benefits cement can provide to our society.”
In a press release, the ministry said this return of proceeds is mobilizing Canada's heavy industry emitters to contribute funds toward these decarbonization projects, resulting in a total investment of $337 million to further build Canada’s clean economy and create jobs.
Canada’s industrial pollution-pricing system, called the Output-Based Pricing System, imposes an emissions performance standard for each heavy industrial sector in which companies with emissions that exceed the standard must pay, while those that perform well earn credits to sell. This gives companies an incentive to cut pollution and supports clean innovation.
Canada’s approach to carbon-pollution pricing lets provinces and territories put their own industrial pricing systems in place as long as they meet national minimum stringency standards. Most provinces manage their own industrial carbon-pricing systems. Proceeds collected in jurisdictions where the federal Output-Based Pricing system applies or applied such as Manitoba, New Brunswick, Ontario and Saskatchewan are being returned through the Output-Based Pricing System Decarbonization Incentive Fund and the Future Electricity Fund.
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