Murat Kahya
Medcem Çimento General Manager
Technologies for reducing the environmental impact of cement factories are increasing day by day. How do you think carbon neutral factories will affect the future of the cement industry?
For a sustainable and livable world, we need to protect our environment and leave it clean for other generations. With almost all major countries becoming parties to the Paris Climate Change Agreement, it was aimed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions significantly. We, as a country, took sides. Together with the European Green Deal, net greenhouse gas emissions must be zeroed by 2050. In our country, which is a part of this, the cement sector has a share in 11% of the total emissions. Therefore, we have to take measures to reduce our carbon emissions. We have to strive to achieve these goals together with the strategies to be followed by taking the “Best Available Technologies” document as a guide. Factories that cannot reduce their emission levels gradually will not be able to survive. Factories that achieve these targets will be able to continue their activities, while those that do not will have to close. Today, many old technology, inefficient, high emission factories in China are legally closed. In our country, factories with old technology have switched to new technologies with new investments. The production of cement, which is the basic material for building materials, will continue for many years. But those who do this with environmental protection strategies will survive. Many new technologies are being developed. It will be possible to reach the carbon neutral target with carbon capture, use and stocking technology. On the other hand, there is a very tough competition in the cement sector both in our country and in the world export market. Factories that keep their costs down and fulfill these requirements will remain among the players of the future. As sector companies, we need to keep it among the main topics on our agenda.
What kind of sensitivity do you, as a company, show about the environment? What are the strategies you follow and actions you take in this field?
We are a new and constantly growing company in the sector in recent years. Sustainability has been on our strategic roadmap since the construction phase of our current production line. In this regard, we first determined our purpose and targets. Our factory was established as one of the most modern and efficient facilities of our country by choosing the latest technology equipment. The efficiency of the combustion process and total energy consumption allows our emissions to be low. We chose the same criteria with newer technologies in our second line investment that we just started. I think it will be the most efficient production line in our country with its low carbon emission. We also started our investment for the use of alternative fuels. With the system to be established, we will rapidly increase our alternative fuel use from the end of 2022. With the reduction of fossil fuel use, our greenhouse gas emissions will also decrease. On the other hand, we produce electricity from waste gas with the waste heat recovery facility installed in our factory. In this way, we meet 23% of the electricity need of our factory. We carry out operational excellence actions at every point from production to quality control, logistics and transportation. All the processes we mentioned are done with automation. In this way, efficiency can be increased. We use the wastes of the marble quarries around us as raw materials. Thus, both natural resource consumption and emission reduction can be achieved. Another action of ours is to make our market analysis and increase our cement sales with additives. We continue to plant 10 thousand trees annually.
As Medcem Cement, we aimed to be the largest factory and exporter of our country. It is our priority to do this as one of the most environmentally friendly factories at the same time. We are aware that if there is no environment, there is nothing.
There are some points that we have difficulty in taking these actions. The difficulty of accessing alternative fuel is the most important one. Waste collection-classification culture needs to be developed in our country. In this period, the industry needs support. It is important to use household waste in our sector. Another may be a temporary import permit for non-hazardous waste-derived waste. With the legal regulations to be made, the availability of waste in our country can be increased.
