The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 33 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 2 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Ellis: European carbon regulations will double the price of cement
“They realize this is going to, these regulations are going to double the price of cement in Europe, whether you're going to be paying for post-combustion carbon capture, or you're simply going to be paying the carbon price.”
Ellis: Low-carbon cement green premiums are negligible for building owners
“90% of the cost of cement being labor, and only five percent being materials costs, even, even as these new technologies for making cement you know, until they get to scale, they're going to have some sort of green premium associated with them, but that green …”
Sublime CEO: Standards are not enough; concrete workers reject stiff mixes
“These performance-based standards, the ASTM, the ACI, all of these things are necessary, but not sufficient in the eyes of the concrete subcontractor, because they have to make sure it finishes in a way where it doesn't hurt that man's elbow, because if you ge…”
Ellis: Section 45Q provides $80/ton for point-source capture that Sublime cannot claim
“There is a 45 Q tax credit for, you know, it's like 80 dollars a ton for removing CO₂ from a flu stack, and we don't have that.”
Ellis: Carbon capture is the only way to decarbonize Portland cement
“There's almost no way around that except for, you know, post-combustion carbon capture. If you're making Portland cement.”
Ellis: SCMs can only replace about 30% of Portland cement
“So you can only blend about 30% in before you start reducing, you know, diluting the performance.”
Ellis: Sublime's process yields pure CO2 for under $10 a ton
“This means that we can use calcium carbonate, in which case, when the calcium is extracted, we're left with pure, cold, compressed CO₂, so inherently captured CO₂ that's ready to go into a pipeline or to be used in food grade applications, a very low cost of c…”
Ellis: Sublime achieves standard strength without high-temperature kiln chemistry
“So, you know, we don't use a thermal process in the kiln. So, you know, we don't have 1500 degrees Celsius, and therefore we don't make that tricalcium silicate phase that's only stable at that temperature. But we still make, in the end, that calcium silicate …”
Ellis: Sublime's cement matches the embodied energy of Portland cement
“Sublime's process has, produces a cement that has the same embodied energy as Portland cement today.”
Sublime Systems will sell cement environmental attributes to Microsoft
“So we, you know, work with Microsoft. That's one of you know, the announcements that Sublime made recently is an MOU signed with Microsoft and to buy the environmental attributes of some of our cement.”
Leah Ellis: Labor represents 80% of concrete's total installed cost
“The total installed cost of concrete is, is 80% labor, and so even if there's a premium on the cement part, once you roll that into concrete, and then concrete's a very small part of the building, and then, you know, but it is a big part of the carbon footprin…”
Ellis: Space constraints prevent ready-mix plants from stocking niche low-carbon cements
“They occupy some of the most central and desired plots of real estate in the hearts of cities so that they can get concrete through traffic to where it needs to be poured.
So they're very space constrained, and every square foot of land is important to them.
S…”
Ellis: Sublime Systems views post-combustion carbon capture as its primary competitor
“What Sublime is doing is technology-enabled carbon avoidance. Our competitor is post-combustion carbon capture.”
Ellis: US government buys half of all domestic cement
“So the staggering fact is that the U.S. Government buys half of the cement that's produced in the United States, and that's through the General Services Administration, which has three hundred million square feet of floor space, so they're the biggest real est…”
Ellis: Contractor labor makes up 90% of installed concrete costs
“What's interesting is that 90% of the cost, the total installed cost of concrete, is actually labor from the contractor.”
Ellis: Producing one ton of cement generates one ton of CO2
“And, you know, on average one ton of cement, just rounding up to big numbers, one ton of cement produces one ton of CO₂.”
Ellis: Coal plant retirements are causing a near-term fly ash shortage
“Right now fly ash is very popular, so fly ash is an amorphous silicate collected from coal-fired power plants, and of course, those are going away, and for a good reason but it does mean that there's a shortage of fly ash, a near-term shortage”
Ellis: Cement kilns instantly vaporize scrap tires into CO2
“When you throw a tire into a cement kiln, at that temperature, it just vaporizes entirely into CO₂ within a matter of seconds. So it's actually a pretty clean way of getting rid of some pretty dirty material.”
Ellis: Concrete recarbonation absorbs at most half its original footprint
“However, it will only absorb the limestone emissions. So it'll only absorb about half of its original CO two footprint.”
Ellis: Construction standards are shifting from chemical composition to performance
“But now architects are moving towards performance based standards. So There's standards for blended cement, where it's 50% COT Portland cement, 50%, where almost anything you want, as long as it meets this performance-based standard, and there's a bunch of tes…”
Ellis: The US imports about 20% of its cement
“We're also importing about 20% of the cement we use, so shipping it from overseas.”
Ellis: The average US cement kiln is 50 to 60 years old
“Also, the average age of cement kilns in the U.S. Is about 50 to 60 years old, and we're starting to see some turnover in the capacity that's built here.”
Ellis: Two of three Northeast cement plants closed in the past year
“So, for example, in the past year, here in New England, two out of the three cement plants have closed down. So, the Dragon cement plant in Maine, as well as Heidelberg plant in New York, leaving just the Raveena plant left.”
One large cement plant supplies roughly 100 ready-mix concrete plants
“So one million ton per year cement plant feeds about a hundred ready mix concrete plants.”
Ellis: Sublime Systems received $87M DOE OSED demonstration grant
“You know, we've got this grant from OSED. It's eighty-seven million dollars for our industrial demonstration program.”
Ellis: Cement is the most produced man-made material globally
“Well, concrete is about 90% rocks and 10% cement, but even so, cement is the most massively produced man-made material in the world, and second most consumed material besides water.”
Ellis: Portland cement costs approximately $130 per ton
“So Portland cement is around a 130 dollars a ton.”
Ellis: About 80% of ready-mix concrete plants are independently owned
“So I've, about 80% of ready mix plants are independently owned.”
Ellis: Portland cement plants produce between 1M and 5M tons annually
“So the average small Portland cement plant produces a million tons of cement per year, and they go all the way up to three or four, maybe even five million tons of cement produced per year.”
Ellis: Cement emissions split evenly between heat and chemical decomposition
“Cement being the most massive industry by volume in the world also produces an almost equivalent amount of CO₂, and that's, you know, again, speaking, speaking in big even numbers, it's roughly half from the fossil fuel needed to get to a thousand degrees and …”
Ellis: All major cement companies include carbon capture in 2050 net-zero plans
“The major categories are post-combustion carbon capture, so you'll see this in all of the major cement companies, their pathways to net zero by twenty-fifty.”
Ellis: Concrete absorbs CO2 over centuries, acting as a carbon sink
“Cement, Portland cement does recarbonate over time. So if you have like a piece of pavement, for example, it will continue to absorb CO₂ from the atmosphere over timescales of, you know, Decades to hundred years or millennia will totally turn back into calcium…”
Ellis: Tricalcium silicate gives Portland cement its high early strength
“Portland cement contains a very special phase called tricalcium silicate, which is only stable at around 1500 degrees Celsius. So as it falls out of the kiln and is quenched, this tricalcium silicate phase is sort of frozen, and that phase is what leads to Por…”