00:00What's the most important commodity for modern civilization?
00:03You might say oil, gas, copper, iron ore, maybe even gold.
00:06I'll give you a hint, after water, it's the substance we use most,
00:09somewhere between 25 and 30 billion metric tons a year.
00:13That's almost three times as much as all the coal we dig up.
00:16Have you got it yet? It's concrete.
00:19But that dominance might not last much longer.
00:21Consumption of cement, the glue that holds concrete together,
00:24has hit a wall after decades of growth.
00:26In fact, we may never get back to the 2021 peak,
00:29even as India, Southeast Asia and Africa continue to build.
00:33So why is the decline happening?
00:35China. For three decades, the country drove the global cement market
00:38and still accounts for nearly half of output.
00:40At its peak, it used about 1.8 tonnes per person per year,
00:44compared to 0.25 tonnes in the US.
00:46But the boom's over. Output is already down 30% from 2020.
00:50Prices are near decade lows,
00:51and factories have more than twice the capacity they need.
00:54From here, even a modest decline would still slash global output
00:57by hundreds of millions of tonnes.
00:59That's why no other country can fill the concrete gap left by China.
01:02That's actually good news,
01:03because cement accounts for roughly 8% of global emissions.
01:06And cleaning out cement production has been painfully slow.
01:10So the best hope for cutting emissions is simply using less of it.
01:14So, in the video, I'll be in the beginning.
01:18I'll be there with you,
01:20including a lot of small emissions.
01:22So the most you need to operate is a little bit.
01:24So I've been learning.
01:27I'm learning.
01:29So you can definitely see the natural climate change
01:32on the planet.
Comments