Productivity & Net Zero
MELANIE DAWSON: The next two speakers are going to be zooming in on productivity, and also net zero. So, first up we have Kevin Lunney. Kevin is the Operations Director at Mannok, and Mannok, who have recently celebrated a giant step forward in decarbonising cement production. So, I'm going to invite Kevin up to share his presentation and there's a really good video in there as well. So, welcome.
KEVIN LUNNEY: Thanks very much, Melanie, and thank you all for coming along. I just want to go through, I guess, a few points just firstly by way of background of who we are. So, Mannok is a business based down in the border between Fermanagh and Cavan. We employ 818 staff, and principally we are a manufacturer of heavyside product for the construction sector, and a lot of our products would go into, obviously, traditional construction, and also into the off-site build products. So, we make insulation, for example, we make cement, which is our biggest product. We make blocks, we make aircrete blocks for the, for the building sector. We, we make standard blocks, and we make a whole range
of aggregate materials for the constructions trade. I suppose one of the interesting parts about us is we have the border running right through our operations. So, when Brexit came along, it was obviously quite an interesting challenge for a period of time, and particularly when you take the context of the situation, where we send about 90 articulated loads of material to the UK from this complex every day, and that complex of material is made up of light goods and heavy goods, some of which are manufactured in Northern Ireland, and some of which are manufactured in Southern Ireland. So, when we got into the whole
concept of producing customs documentation for products that were going out through, perhaps, out through Rosslare over to the UK, or going out through the Belfast ports to the UK, and the relevant documentation to integrate with Irish revenue, HMRC, both imports and exports, it was, you know, a particular challenge. I'll come back to that a little bit further, but it just gives you a little bit of a context of what we're trying to deal with, and I suppose it leads, you know, quite neatly into the whole digitisation process, because we wouldn't do this. We wouldn't be capable of doing this unless we had a fairly substantial digitisation programme.
I suppose what we've done, and I think I just have a couple of slides of introduction, my main focus is on decarbonisation, but I suppose, we've, I suppose, embraced this probably about five years ago, the whole context of productivity and digital, and from my point of view, very much these are all interrelated. They're very much part of the same process, and one dovetails with the other. So, we've implemented Lean and Six-Sigma in quite a number of our plants, and we're continuing to roll that out, focused heavily on the operations of the business in the manufacturing of the products that we've got.
But, dovetailing with that under our what we call our Leading Excellence programme is the whole skills and development programme, which provides targeted training and, again all of this leads us-, there's a digitisation element to all of this. Sustainability is one of the core four pillars of what we do, and continuous improvement feeds into that as well. So, I think it's important to note that these things are not to be seen in isolation. Sustainability, digitisation, training,
development, they're all part of the one programme, and we've tried to develop that under the Leading Excellence framework. So, just some examples of some of the things we've done, I suppose it's just getting into the whole process of five S, Six-Sigma, all those various stages. So, we've started, you know, a significant programme of change, and I suppose a few questions was asked earlier on, who does all this sit within the organisation? We developed a role in our organisation called Business Change, and there's a Head of Business Change, and the Business Change role is not, definitely not an IT person. I think that's a significant important note. They're involved in looking at process change, analysing what we're doing, and try to build efficiencies into the process. So, we have implemented
quite a lot of digitisation, quite a lot of improvement programmes across the board, and I suppose just to give you some of the examples of what we've done, and I'm not going to labour this point, because that has been covered in other areas, but we have transformation programmes in place for production and optimisation, and we have started to include some expert systems and I guess, I call them semi AI, in terms of the processes that we adopt. In the whole maintenance routes we have some very significant costs associated with maintenance and we've developed those. Transport and customs, I mentioned earlier on, particularly around the whole export, import side for materials coming in, but more importantly for exporting material to the UK. Environmental health and safety management is something that we've digitised, and I know it was mentioned earlier on some comments about access to sites and all that, sort of, stuff, but what we've, you know, sought to do is to integrate that with that, with things like insurance covers, our insurance is in date for sub, for subcontractors coming in the gate. What is the certification for the individuals involved, have they got the right certification for coming onto site, coming onto our sites, or any other sites that we're involved with? Skills and training, we developed a, a very significant piece of work around digitisation, really this is converting what was paper based, written training and standard operating procedures into a digitised format. So, we now have a
programme whereby every operation that we do in the plant, in any of our plants, it has been certified by Health and Safety, but it's a video and we show the video, and we train the video, and there's a test on the video for any individual who's coming into the company, and that has been probably one of the most transformative things we have achieved, because we have identified in that, that all these binders of standard operating procedures that everybody writes and gets in place for ISO 9000, or whatever they happen to be, nobody reads them. So, what we have to do is try to bring that out onto the factory floor, so we have training stations right throughout the plant, whereby they will actually, all the workers have the opportunity to pull up the video, they're tagged, they're indexed, and they can watch the video about any particular procedure, and you can be sure they can do that in the context that they are doing it the correct, safe way, which has been certified by Health and Safety, and that's a significant thing. Energy management, and this starts to lead us on into the whole context of sustainability, energy management is, is, is huge. We are
spending probably about 40 to 45 million pounds per annum on energy between energy and coal, between electricity and coal, sorry. So, having that controlled and making whatever possible savings in that, and having that as efficient as possible is, is major. I'm just going to touch on briefly the context of LCAs and EPDs, life cycle analysis for the production of our products, and sending our products to architects, or to construction companies across the the whole of Ireland and the UK with the relevant EPDs is critical to our function. So, we have digitised the product from that perspective, we have, insofar as we can control the carbon content in those, it goes, it goes with them, and that's, and that's a key thing. So, obviously happy to talk a little bit more about that because that's not necessarily the main focus of what I'm about. I want you to learn off this slide by heart, and I'm going to question you at the end. This is just an example of what we needed to do for transport and customs
when we started to do this. So, really is just an identification to say we needed to analyse this very, very-, in a very, very detailed way between our ERP systems, our customers, our haulage organisations, how was the whole process going to work? And while it was challenging and difficult, I'm glad to say at this stage, that everything that we sent to the UK is now totally-, sorry, totally automated, we don't have any paper in that process. So, that is, you know, a prime example of how somebody had to deal with a very difficult and new problem, and present it. So, we've
gained efficiencies in that, there's still, obviously, some, some overhead in running that process, but it has allowed us to export those 90 loads, of mixed loads of product every day, and the mixed load context is extremely important for us from a sustainability point of view, because if we're sending a truck to London from Fermanagh, we don't want to send it half full with a load of cement on the bottom. We want to send it with a load of cement, plus a load of insulation on the top, so that's it's a full load, an efficient load, a sustainable load. Customers on the other end really like that because they get one load instead of two, and that's how-, that's really one of our unique selling points. How we can compete selling product into the UK on that basis? So, really that's just a context to do, to do that when the Brexit thing came along we were worried about it, because it was potentially going to upset our USP, but thankfully we've got sorted and we're fully integrated with all the relevant customs authorities of whatever stage you are.
I just want to talk a little bit now about sustainability, and I suppose as cement manufacturer probably one of the highest polluters in Northern Ireland. We were very conscious of this from an early stage, and I suppose in many senses I suppose, thinking about the philosophical questions around this, I suppose we had to evolve our thinking. I suppose we were sitting as, you know, a major focus point for an organisation producing a lot of carbon into the system. So, I suppose in many stages when we started the process we were, kind of, taking the low road, kind of, let, look at, maybe let's not say too much about this, we're a big polluter, let's, let's wait and see what everybody else does. Let's figure out if somebody
else maybe can come up with the solutions before we can. But, the more we started to think about this, we realised that probably doesn't work. We needed to start to think about this in a slightly different manner, and we started to look at this and said, 'Let's tackle this problem head on.' We are a producer of somewhere around 800,000 tonnes of carbon per annum, in Northern Ireland, or in Northern Ireland, sorry in Ireland because its manufacturers based just south of the border, but we've a plant in the North as well. So, majority of it is, is produced in that region, and what are we actually going to do with that? Everybody else is maybe going on to different opportunities around carbon capture, and carbon storage, and all these things, but we don't have some of those opportunities. So, we needed to really tackle this problem head on, and we have been doing that for the last four or five years, and I'm glad to say at this stage, we think we're making some progress. We're certainly not there, but we think we have
a pathway to progress, and I think where we're at at the minute is trying to think ahead, and some of the things that we've done more recently is actually trying to create an opportunity out of some of the issues that we've got. We're a large producer of carbon in an isolated area we're 100 miles from any port, and 60% of our business goes to the UK. Hoe do you solve that problem? So, I suppose those were the types of things we're trying to, to figure out, and about two years ago, we set about really looking at this and we got our board together, and we got working groups together, and we started to produce what we called our 2030 sustainability vision, and we didn't have-, you know, we got our board to, to recognise first of all, and our financiers to recognise, this is something that you're going to have to sort. If you don't do this within the next five to seven years, you're not going to have a business, and we know that. So, I suppose where we ended up with that is we ended up with a sustainability vision where this is, sort of, the key point, and I think it's no harm to mention it because it's, it's something that everybody has to make this transformation, in our belief. So, we've set about the main driving force of that is, where we've said is, we've a moral and ethical obligation to do everything in our power, and sphere of influence to offset the worst effects of the three global crises that we're all facing. Climate change, biodiversity loss,
and pollution of the environment. Now if you were to look at that and say, 'Well, Mannok is probably the organisation that's the most at-, the most influencing those in its region.' So, how do we fix that, because we still have 800 people that we have to employ, and we can't just, sort of, close the book on it and say, 'It's not going to work.' So, what we did was, we developed a whole range of things in that sustainability vision around people, planet, and partners, and it allows us to focus on all, sorts of, things around development of our personnel, training, development, health and safety, which we mentioned, and also our position in the community, and the position with our customers. So, that lead on to things like developing the EPDs, so that we could give those to customers and construction companies. It
allows us to get involved with local schools, whereby we would set up-, we set up a Mannok futures programme, and in that Mannok futures programme we have partnerships with local schools, and it's one of the most transformative things we've done. So, we've now a formal partnership in place with six local schools, one in Cavan and five in, in, in Fermanagh, secondary schools, whereby we actually go into the school and talk to them about real problems. Real issues around sustainability, real engineering issues, real things that are important, and the feedback that we have got from that, from the schools, it's hugely educational for us, because they begin-, the school kids who are really looking at everything from digitisation through to the current thinking in relation to social values. They're telling us what this needs to be, and we have-, and I suppose, we're taking that on board and trying to develop it into a programme for the future. So, we've schools programmes, we've apprenticeship programmes, we've graduate programmes, we've experienced ongoing life, life long training programmes, and the more you put into that while initially, you know, we said, 'Well, this is a bit of an overhead, can we spend all this money, this time on this?' Very, very quickly realised that the value we're getting back is a multiple of anything you're putting into it. So, I just encourage people to think about that. Specifically with Mount Lourdes school in
Enniskillen, we developed a partnership in sustainability, and again, the value associated with that is, is immense. We put a camera, a live camera into one of the quarries in, that we, that we use for the cement plant, and inside the quarry, inside that-, in the quarry there was a nesting site for kestrels. So, we'd noticed that these kestrels were, were coming every year, so we put a camera in, and we then we put a live feed into the school, and the amount of, of positivity that we received from the girls in the school watching the cameras, watching the eggs hatching, seeing the kestrels develop and, and, and-, then fly away, and then when are they coming back, and the education associated with that. That allowed us then to promote the concept with Ulster Wildlife where we did a natural assets action plan, where Ulster Wildlife actually studied all of our 2,000 acres that we control, and they said, 'To improve biodiversity, in the best way possible, what you should do is is do this, plant trees of this nature there. Try to do something with that invasive species,' and now we have a programme of works, where all the workers are starting to get involved in protection of biodiversity on the lands that we control.
So, a significantly positive feeling around all that is what is, what is driving some of our activity, but the real issue, I suppose, where the rubber meets the road is around carbon reduction, and we are a cement producer, so how do we actually get the carbon out of cement? I suppose a couple of things maybe to note, this is a calculation of the submissions that we make to the EU ETS scheme. You'll see on, for '22, which is the year just ended, 64% of the carbon that comes from the manufacture of cement, which, this is really the manufacture of clinker. Clinker is the first stage in cement manufacture, there's two stages, you manufacture clinker, and then you blend it with various materials to make cement, but-, so the core measure is the carbon intensity of cement-, sorry, of clinker, and 64% of that doesn't come from any fuel. It comes from the, it's effectively the melting of limestone, or the burning of limestone and then calcination. So, even if you have a totally renewable fuelled cement plant, you're still going to get 64% of the, of the, of the carbon that comes out of comes out of the, of the limestone, and you can't do anything else. Right back to the
Roman times, people have needed cement, people have needed to melt limestone, and produce what's called Portland cement. Now, there are various other things which I'll mention, and there's some things which can help a little bit, but just to bear that in mind, 64% of it comes from that. Our focus, and the focus of the cement industry to date, has been to focus on the removal of coal, and we're making significant progress on that. The, the particular activities we've been doing over the last number of years has been introducing new technology, which effectively takes out coal, and puts something else in instead. So, the, the, standard approach to this is to remove coal and replace it with a thing called solid recovered fuel, which is really a waste industry derived product. So, instead of incinerating waste you use it as a cement fuel, and that has been the driving force, maybe just mention one thing, the carbon intensity, if you note at the bottom of this is the carbon intensity of our cement clinker is point eight three two, so in other words, if every tonne of cement-, oh sorry of clinker that we produce, point eight three two tonnes of carbon is produced.
So, it's a massive number. So, we manufacture about, well give or take, about a million tonnes of cement per year, so you're talking about 800,000 tonnes CO2, there is really no other way to get out of that except start to focus on the, on, on the points in turn. So, I suppose what we've done is the fuel flex system which we launched about two years-, about a month ago, really was new piece of new technology, we did a piece of research with the, an equipment manufacturer out of Denmark, and we actually did a five year development cycle to actually introduce a new piece of equipment, it's a world first, and that allows us to reduce that point eight three down to somewhere around point, it's point seven nine. So, a significant enough move. We have also some further work planned, which we're doing next year, which will introduce some of the same technology into the kiln stage, which again would be, kind of, getting out there in relation to the technology that's available in cement plants, but we're, kind of, pushing the-, we're hoping to push the envelope, and we've an objective in our sustainability plan to reduce our CO2 intensity by 33% by 2030. Those two pieces of equipment will take down somewhere around one third of that, it will get us to about one third of that 33%, somewhere around ten or twelve percent. So, a significant move even in a short space of time, it's, it's quite
interesting, when we looked at this at the start, we said, 'How can we deal with this problem?' And when we actually look at it, begins to realise that actually there is some possibilities. There's other things which we can do, and it starts to get into some other technologies. So, the next one is a change of a burner. There's a new burner being developed by FLS, which is the cement, principle cement manufacturer of equipment in the world, and they're really hoping to introduce that to us at some point next year, with a view that we'd have it operational about '25. And the last one, I suppose is one of the difficulties you've got with cement plants is, you can do a lot with removing coal, but coal is a very, very high energy density carrier, and you need something, if you're going to get rid of coal, which is high density material, a high energy density material. Hydrogen is such a material, but it's very hard to get green hydrogen unless you have access to significant volumes of renewables, and funny enough, we happen to live in Fermanagh, in one of the highest yielding renewable energy wind sites in the country. The wind coming in from the North Atlantic actually, there's a number of
wind farms there already, and that's why they've been put there, they're very high yielding. So, what we've been trying is a number of projects now to start to generate significant volumes of renewable energy from new wind farms so that we can actually feed that directly into the cement plant for electrification, but secondly into the production of a high density material such as hydrogen, green hydrogen to get rid of the last lump of coal that we've got in the system. And I suppose, just to give you some, sort of, numbers then on that point eight three two comes, comes down somewhere around, on the fuel side, we can probably see ourselves getting rid of about 60% of that by 2030, and on the overall basis, we get down to about 23%. But that still leaves us with all this stuff that we've got coming out of the limestone, that actually doesn't help at all. So, I suppose, we'll come
back to that in a second, but I suppose what we-, wanted to just talk briefly, this is the FuelFlex, this is the project that we launched to quite significant international acclaim about a month ago, and it's been very, very good for us. It actually has put us now in the position internationally that we have a significant story to tell, and within that we're now starting to see visitors coming to our plant. So, this is a visit from South Korea, a number of very efficient South Korean engineers, and it was quite interesting to see those guys coming here, we're typically going out to look at the new technologies that they're doing out in South Korea to see what's happening in the world, they were actually coming here to see some of the new stuff, so we're quite pleased about that. The new JetFlex burner, just to mention again, not to go into to much detail, but we're internationally collaborating with a number of plants. We had a very useful collaboration with a project in Slovakia, which has introduced a new burner, and the, really the main point on this is to state-, this goes to show that typically these are one pipe, you would have been pumping out large volumes of coal, out into the kiln and burning it to produce limestone. This very sophisticated piece of equipment allows you to do various things, oxygen, hydrogen, SRF, various other fuels, ideally aimed at changing from coal to a new, to a new renewable, a new renewable process. But there's a lot in that, there's a lot of engineering, and
there's just, there's a graph, there's a plan there to show you these are significant engineering projects to change a cement plant from one thing to another, and you might wonder, well, you know, is, is this whole thing financeable? And it is a little bit of a concern, because there's a lot to do that, and I suppose, we've, we've a number of choices. We can decide that we can't produce cement any more, and lose our 800 staff, and reduce the economic wealth of the area, or we have to try this. And once you start to look at that, and look at that positively, and you look at the fact that you have wind, and you look at the fact that you have technology that you can actually do, and you look at the fact that there is a lot of positives coming to bear at the same time, and just really, just try and focus in on it, I think there's lots of things we, we, we've been able to do. I'll just mention also, because there's another stage of development around the whole concept of producing hydrogen in larger scale to do a number of things. The production of hydrogen is quite a complex process, it's quite energy intensive, but we're working with a company called Catagen, which is based in Belfast. A very innovative organisation and we're collaborating with a number of international and European players, to actually-, they produce hydrogen in a more efficient way. So, we're now starting to develop the concept of taking waste heat
from the plant, which is effectively free, and producing hydrogen, which can then be compressed inline and produced-, and potentially then, moved through that process to produce a syngas. Or, as it was mentioned earlier on, any diesel out of that process. Is it highly energy intensive, but the technology is now starting to come into play and I think, you know, hopefully there'll be some good stuff coming out of that. Just want to mention briefly there's a number of activities that we're doing, because this is not a one stop shop, you need to look at all sorts of things, I mentioned about materials, I mentioned about energy, I mentioned about efficiency, I mentioned about digitisation, and I mentioned about research. So, there's a whole series of things around this, and there's also the whole concept of what do you do with the cement once you have it made? Are you actually utilising it in the most efficient way possible? So, what we've been doing recently is starting to work with people like CarbonCure, they're an American company which actually take carbon and put into concrete products, ready mixed products, and from those products they can displace some of the cements. So, now we have a lower carbon, the carbon is sequestered fully into the
product. You are actually producing less cement, and you're sequestering carbon. That's really a trial process, so when we get to the next stage of development, we're trying to take that 60% of CO2 that's coming out of the process, and trying to capture it, then we have to figure out, what are we actually going to do with it? So, the concept is that we will start to put it into the products. Reduce the cement content in the product at the same time, and reduce the overall CO2 intensity in the, in, in, by doing that. I suppose, I just want to talk
briefly then, a little bit about some of the things we've been doing, again we're based on the border, so we link up with Cavan County Council and Leitrim County Council, and obviously Fermanagh and Omagh District Council. So, we've been working through a process of trying to figure out how we can take it to the next step, and because of some of the things I've mentioned already about high wind area, road fleet, we've developed this concept of a green hydrogen valley, which actually is now morphing into a green energy valley, because it, sort of, broadens out beyond that. There's a number of stages in this, and rather than me trying to explain these, what I'll ask is, if it's possible to run the video now. It's just a short video, explains the concept of this green energy valley, and then we can follow on at the end. VIDEO: Introducing Mannok energy valley, a concept with the potential to transform an already progressive industrial base into a truly sustainable power house of employment, clean energy, and future economic prosperity in the heart of the border region. Harnessing natural and renewable energy sources, driving
innovation in sustainable technology. Replacing four million litres of diesel per year. Decarbonising the production of cement by removing over half a million tonnes of CO2 annually. Powering three large manufacturing facilities with almost 150 gigawatt hours of renewable energy per year, in a closed loop process which utilises carbon capture technology, generated oxygen and green hydrogen, made possible because of the unique location and diverse nature of the Mannok business suite.
A multi phase fifteen year energy transformation programme. Each of which are self financing, and will support the nation's net zero target. Energy valley underpins the numerous and wide ranging sustainability initiatives defined in the Mannok 2030 vision, and will bring us to within touching distance of true energy independence. Situated on the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, the region's unique opportunities make energy valley a particularly viable and potentially one off concept, with proven high yield onshore wind, and already existing high levels of curtailed and constrained wind capacity.
High localised energy demand with large scale tethered road transport fleet, which can utilise hydrogen, or its derivatives, as a main fuel. High demand for oxygen, a by-product of the electrolysis process, which is normally vented, but in this context becomes highly valuable. A well invested manufacturing technology base, which facilitates the rapid adaptation to a new generation of new renewable fuels, including green hydrogen, oxyfuel, and synthetic fuels using existing access and utility infrastructure.
Renewable power derived from curtailed and baseload wind generation capacity close to the plant will be used to power a new five megawatt electrolysis plant, which will generate green hydrogen sufficient to convert over 70% of Mannok's 150 heavy goods truck fleet to fully renewable power. Oxygen generated from the process will be used to introduce a new, cleaner oxyfuel combustion cycle to the cement business. Combustion in an enhanced oxygen atmosphere improves burn efficiency, increases plant capacity and reduces emissions. The flue gases which are produced, contain less nitrogen with a high CO2 concentration, making the carbon easier to capture and sequester rather than vent. This clean capture of CO2 enables its permanent sequestration into ready mix and concrete products under a process known as carbon cure, which is already gaining significant traction in the sector. New dedicated wind and solar installations of up to 150 megawatt combined capacity constructed next to the cement plant, which will be designed to replace all current grid electricity demand.
This will progressively replace over 50% of total energy requirement in the business with green alternatives over the next fifteen years. This will facilitate further cost competitive electrification of the cement plant, and the introduction of green hydrogen as an alternative fuel to the cement production process. It also will allow the existing grid sourced electricity demand from our PIR packaging and related manufacturing facilities to be replaced by direct connection to the new dedicated renewable energy capacity.
Emerging technology in large scale carbon capture and use will capture increasing amounts of CO2 from the cement plant and combine this with additional green hydrogen to produce a new generation of synthetic fuels, including ethanol and dimethyl ether. It is expected that these fuel alternatives will enable the business to close the loop entirely in some application areas, where hydrogen is not a suitable fuel for direct use. Mannok is collaborating with numerous technology providers in the delivery of the transformation programme, which includes specialists in the renewable sector, as well as leading research institutions, government bodies, and international equipment providers. Realisation of the energy value concept
will ensure the business becomes a truly sustainable entity for the next and future generations. KEVIN LUNNEY: I'm conscious of the time, but I suppose, what we've done on that is, you know, set out a, sort of, a very planned process, some of which will happen in the next couple of years, some of which is already in place. We've already-, you might have seen we received funding from BEIS for a project to take curtailed wind from an existing wind farm, to produce hydrogen in the first instance to replace the diesel in the lorries, and that programme has now started, and that study is now going in place, and that will take curtailed wind. Because we're on the
west of the province, there's lots of curtailed wind that meant between 12% and 14% of wind capacity can't get back onto the network. So, this concept will actually take that wind, because it's free, and we'll take that and produce hydrogen, and use the hydrogen in the lorries. There's obviously challenges with the timescale for getting lorries, etc., but that's that, and then various other stages of that go through, which we've outlined in the overall plan. That's just some slides there which indicate we've actually started to do the work and where the wind farm will actually be located, and the scaling, and sizing, and engineering designs that I've started in that. And we've also included solar in that because solar and battery are probably going to play a part in this, if we're going to become a, sort of, a truly independent, energy independent entity.
I suppose one of the things that's challenging for us is how do we-, once we do all of that, I think it's maybe important to point out one of the-, one of the big processes, or the, the big, the, the government policy in the UK is to-, for large carbon emitters, is this concept of carbon clusters. So, what they're doing in the UK is, in the midlands and down south, and various places, they have this idea where you-, if you're in an industrial base, your carbon will effectively go into a pipe, if you're a large producer, and that pipe will be then piped out to, to either the North Sea or out into the Irish Sea, into, into disused oil and gas fields. So, I suppose, that's what the British government is putting on, they've put lots of announcements at the moment on how that's going to happen, and putting money against that, and this concept of carbon clusters, and that's grand if you're in a carbon cluster and you're fairly close to a pipe that can actually take your carbon, and go out and pump it into the North Sea, into the (mw 33.05). But if you're sitting in Ballyconnell or Derrylin, it's unlikely we're going to get a pipe to Derrylin. So, what we have to try and figure out is how do we deal with that? And those are the types of challenges we have. So, it goes back to that whole concept about sequestration of carbon locally, sequestration of carbon into products, sequestration of-, coming up with new ideas of how we take that, probably about 500,000 tonnes of CO2 that will come from the limestone after, with all the other bits done, and coming up with new solutions. And we're integrating with
various international organisation now, around ideas to do that. Carbonbuilt is one. It was mentioned about recycling concrete material, that's another organisation that-, there's an organisation focused on that. There's Carbon Re, there's Carbon Upcycling which specialise in taking carbon out of flue stacks and putting it into material which can then be transformed into building materials or other things. They're very early stage but, really, the point I'm making is that this is a multiple facet process, and takes significant effort to try to-, to do that. I think it also mentioned earlier on about ESG and how do you turn the tanker? I suppose, as a cement producer, we are probably the tanker. So,
we're trying to figure out how do we actually get that done and develop our programme? So, we're involved, obviously, with people, very good organisations, businesses in the community, and they, who've helped us to come up with new thinking in this space, and I suppose I would encourage people to not be, you know, disillusioned about what's possible. We are probably at the very touch end of the wedge in this, but all the materials, all the cement that goes into any construction has to come from that, and we think it's important that we don't simply close the book on it and rely on cement producers from other parts of the world. We think it's important to have a, an ingrained, indigenous cement producer, here in Northern Ireland, and we also like to tell people that everywhere we go, we plant trees. Thanks very much. MELANIE DAWSON: Thank you so much, Kevin, that was really interesting and, I suppose, fantastic to hear about the progress, really, that you're making on your collaborative international R&D projects. I mean, you touched on lots of
things there, energy, digitisation, R&D, lots of different things, but one of the things that resonates with me is that the company just seem to have this culture of doing the right as well, and I think that can't be undervalued either. Okay. Moving on to our next speaker. So, up next, we have Liam McEvoy from SustainIQ. Liam is the co-founder of SustainIQ, and very passionate about sustainability and improving business competitiveness. Welcome. LIAM MCEVOY: Thanks, Melanie. Good morning, everyone. I'm delighted to be here with you. We're going to spend about the next twenty minutes or so just exploring how we really should be taking a more data-driven approach to net zero, and our net zero goals and targets over, over the coming years. And before I get into
the presentation, just picking up on a couple of the questions before the break. Someone had mentioned about demolishing or not, and if there was any examples. So, I would just encourage you to look at UCL, University College London did a project, the Bartlett School of Architecture, Gilbert-Ash delivered that. So, it's well worth a look, in terms of what they did there, and then someone else raised a point around social value and the policing of that. So, obviously, we know social value's going to be up to 20% waiting in tenders now, in Northern Ireland, to come in this summer, and the SIB have developed a whole new points system around how that's going to be policed. So, again, I would encourage you to look at the SIB
website, just to find out a little bit more about the new points system as well. Okay. Just getting back then to today, make sure I've got that right, yeah, okay. I think, look, first of all, I'm going to very briefly run through net zero to make sure we all understand it, and we're all on the same page. Gonna take a look at some of the drivers. I know we picked up on that earlier as well, but I think it's important we know what the drivers are, and what's pushing net zero up our corporate agendas at such a rapid pace, particularly within our sector. I think
it's important we understand our own greenhouse gas emissions within our own organisations, because we need to know that to, to, to, to really get the planning and get the strategy in place, and then how you can use those emissions to get started. And again, for any of you in the room today that maybe haven't yet started, there's no need to panic. We've got a window of opportunity, and there's a few simple steps that we can all-, we can all take, and I'll wrap up by taking a look at some best practice examples as well. So, look, very briefly, obviously, I'm Liam, I'm on of the co-founders of SustainIQ. I've worked in sustainability and construction for around eighteen years, sixteen of which I had to drag everyone to the table kicking and screaming to have the conversation about sustainability. That's completely flipped now, in the last eighteen months, two
years, more so to do with the carbon agenda and, and a lot of people now want to have that conversation, which is great. SustainIQ itself is the all in one ESG and sustainability reporting software solution. So, we make it easy for our customers to capture their sustainability data across all of their different projects, offices and factories, and so on, and then we make it easy through our reporting dashboard for them to report their performance to stakeholders as well. And we're really passionate then, about working very closely with our customers to make sure they use that data in the boardroom, by senior managers to help them make those big investment decisions that we're going to have to make, and Kevin jut outlined quite a few there, down at Mannok, that, that, that they're doing. So, the data is critical to that, both in making an informed decision, but then also once you make that investment, measuring the impact it's, it's actually having, and again, you need the data to be able to do all of that. So, a little bit more about us later but, firstly, if we just get into the, the presentation around net zero. So,
again, I'm sure many of you already know this but just making sure we're all on the same page. Net zero means achieving a balance between greenhouse gas emissions put into the atmosphere and then those taken out. So, once of the best analogies I got a couple of years ago, which just made it click, was by thinking of it like a bath. So,
reaching net zero requires us to balance the amount we emit with the amount that we then remove. And really, what does it mean for all of us here today? And how is it going to impact our businesses? So, companies are now setting targets to commit reducing their greenhouse gas emissions that are aligned with the pathway to, to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels, and we're seeing more and more companies go public with their own targets, 2030, 2040 and beyond as well. Carbon removal and offsetting are going to be critical to that. I think it's important as well, we talk a lot about carbon but, obviously, it applies to all seven greenhouse gas emissions as well. So, depending on your organisation, it's just important to factor that in, and then net zero itself and why this is important, and why we're talking about this so much as well. Net zero is obviously an internationally agreed goal
to mitigating further global warming, and what we do in the next ten years will really determine whether or not we've been-, we've been successful or not, and I think business, ten years from now, is going to look very, very different in terms of how we all operate our own businesses, particularly around the carbon agenda as well. And I think it's important, I think someone mentioned it earlier as well, it's not just us. I think sometimes it's easy for construction to feel like we're being picked on. It's every sector, it's every country, and every industry that, that this is impacting, and it's important that we're aware of what that impact is on our own organisations, and what we're going to do to, to tackle the challenges that, that, that lie ahead. Okay. So, hopefully we're all agreed with regards to the net zero topic itself, but
then just looking at some of those key drivers and what is driving it up the, the agenda. We've mentioned a few of those international drivers, certainly the Paris Agreement, where a lot of the countries stepped forward and made this 2050 commitments, which we're now starting to see filter through. We've got the likes of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, SDGs, I know many of you in the room today have aligned their own ESG and sustainability strategies with many of the SDG goals. But then, nationally, we've got a lot of legal drivers, such as SECR, the Streamlined Energy Carbon Reporting legislation. So, again, many of you in the
room today will already be returning their carbon emissions to Companies House, with their financial returns. We've got other pieces of legislation, such as ESOS, the Energy Saving Opportunity Scheme. In the EU, before Christmas, they signed off on CSRD, the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, which is very much aligned with non-financial reporting, and that's going to impact all of us, operating within the EU, potentially, over the next couple of years, and then we've got GPP, Green Public Procurement, again, in the south, which is now tied up within all public tenders, public procurement contracts. So, anyone there tendering for work, potentially impacted by GPP as well. And then we've got a lot of commercial drivers as well. So, obviously, we've spoke a little bit about those PQQs and tenders, and in particular today, we're focusing on net zero. We're seeing a lot more net zero questions coming through and
there's a hunger, I think now, for data to support that, that you're doing what you say you're doing. So, those clients now want to see evidence of, of your, your drive towards net zero as well. So, having access to data for that is, is critical. Clients themselves are a lot-, in terms of their expectations, they're, they're quite hungry for their suppliers to step forward and take the lead, work with them collaboratively to try and work towards net zero goals as well, and we're seeing a definitely increase in the amount of clients of our customers that are looking for carbon reduction plans. They want to see what the next ten, fifteen, twenty years looks like as well. So, there's lots of drivers. We spoke a little bit about stakeholders as well. It's not just
clients, I know Lorraine had mentioned that McAvoy Group are under recruitment, particularly of new recruits coming in, having a focus on responsible businesses and so on. But, certainly, your employees, your subcontractors, your suppliers, if you've got investors behind the business. Again, investors now want to make sure they're not investing in a company that is negatively impacting the environment or, you know, negatively impacting the local community somewhere. So, they're doing their due diligence, and they're using ESG to do that, and again, in the, the, the public themselves. Everyone, now, is more aware, and they want to work for, or they want to work with responsible businesses. So, lots of drivers there, pushing it up the agenda. Carbon itself, obviously, has been monetised, which is why I've never
spoke to so many finance directors in my life as I've done in the last twelve months. They're obsessed. But it, it definitely is having a, a big-, a big impact, and the fact that we're now seeing, in the UK, companies that meet a certain criteria, returning their carbon emissions to companies house with financial returns, it, kind of, gives you an idea where this is going. There's, there's going to to be-, there's going to be money, taxes, whatever you want to call it, in the not too distant future. So, we've got this window of opportunity to do what
we need to do, to try to, to make those investments. Similar to what Kevin was talking about down at Mannok, build a business case. If you were paying for it today, what, what, how much would it be? And use that as a business case, to start looking at future investments, to help drive down emissions within, within the business, looking at maybe transitioning over to EVs, investments in renewables, whatever it might be. But it's important to start building those business cases. Some of them will be low hanging fruit, can be done quite quickly, some of them will require significant investment, so you need to build in time to, to plan for that as well. Okay, and then I think as well, it's very important that you understand your own emissions within your own businesses, and the impact all of this is going to have on, on you. So, again, a lot of you will be familiar with this but the Greenhouse
Gas Protocol has broken emissions now down into three scopes, and we're all now talking about either scope one, scope two or scope three. Scope one being direct emissions. So, typically, your, your company fleet of vehicles if you own them and, you know, you're paying for the fuel. If you're bringing fuel on sites for, for
plant equipment, for welfare, all gonna be scope one. Scope two, typically, would be maybe electricity, your, your, you know, it's being produced off-site, you're using it on-site. But with regard to scope one and scope two, you're all paying for it. There's invoices in your businesses, there's a bill there, and you've got direct influence over what you can actually do to reduce those emissions. So,
for example, in scope one, as a business, you could start transitioning over towards EV. You've got the control to do that. Scope two, again, with regard to even electricity, you could go to a green energy tariff, you could invest in renewables. So, you've got the control and influence over one and two to do that. Scope three is very different. Those are emissions that are happening because of
your business activity but they're outside of your control. So, typically, maybe supply chain products and materials being delivered to site, that type of thing. But it's important, and then scope three, by far, will be your biggest chunk of emissions and you will be expected to report on that as well. So, the focus, certainly on scope one and scope two, but you can't forget about scope three, you can't kick it too far down the road, people want to see those reports now as well. And again, that, that diagram just really sets out and, and again, sort of,
hopefully, you know, by looking at it will help a lot of businesses understand, 'Well, what is a scope one? What is a scope two and what is a scope three emission within our business?' And then you can start, sort of, looking down, and drilling down, and, and, and identifying the different emission sources across the business as well, both upstream and, and downstream. So, it's really time to just start asking lots of questions within the business, to really understand your, your emissions. So, again, what emissions does your company produce, you know, across scope one, scope two, scope three? Looking at those bills and those invoices for electricity, for fuel, whatever it might be, and, and starting to understand what, what is being produced first of all, and then it's important to drill down a little further, and, and why are they being produced within the business? What, what business operations are they related to? Where are they being produced? When are they being produced? Who's producing them? Asking all of these questions helps you to then start-, to build a bigger picture of emissions right across your organisations, and that is really critical, to understand all of that as you move forward in the next couple of years. Are they direct through through your own business or are they indirect, maybe through supply chain? And again, who's responsible? And once you start capturing all of that, you can start to calculate how many tonnes of CO2 you're producing, and I, I, I think that's critical to build that, almost like a carbon inventory, where you really understand-, you really understand your business, your emissions, and the impact all of this is going to have on your, and then you can start to plan going ahead, to maybe start reducing them as, as well. And then, once you have all of that information, it's important you start using it. So, there's a lot of businesses out there that have a lot of data but they're not properly using it to the full potential. So, I think it's important
that, that you now start looking at it and, and understanding it, and, and how it can help you then make those decisions in terms of strategy going forward, and so on. So, yep, really just start interrogating it, looking at it, why, why maybe certain emission sources are, you know, how if you even just look at construction, why is one project producing a lot more emissions than the other, maybe completed six months previous, similar value, similar sector? You know, when you start just asking those, those questions, there might be factors that couldn't be avoided but, again, you start to see then trends coming through, and it's those trends, really, that are going to highlight the opportunities, particularly the low hanging fruit where you can-, you can have a big impact quite quickly as well. So, again, it's important then to understand by having all the access to all of that data, you understand your, your current position. So, you, you set the baseline. You understand where you are, right here, right now. You put your targets, your KPIs in place, you know where you want to get to, and then you continually review performance so you know where you're at if you're going in the right-, in the right direction. So, it's a continual
monitoring, measuring and reporting process, which is where we come in with regards SustainIQ as well. And again, the focus, initially, for those of you maybe just starting out should be on one and two, but again, not forget about scope three as well. And then it's important to make a start. So, again, I know a lot of this can be
overwhelming, and, you know, we're all now starting to talk a new language, particularly around carbon, and so I think the best place for everyone to start is education. It's critical, it's key, with regards your own employees, with regards your supply chain as well. We've all got a responsibility to bring everyone with us on this journey, we can not run the risk of leaving people behind, and as you say, we, we are-, we are speaking a new language then. So, it is really up to us to, to invest in education and, and increase the amount of understanding and awareness around the carbon agenda, so that we can bring everyone with us on, on the journey as well. And those are just, like, five key steps that we like to, to implement with, with all of our customers, just to get everyone started. So, it's, again, finding out and
understanding your emissions, where you're currently at right now with regard to your own business operations, put that baseline in place, make those commitments, put those targets in place. You know where you want to get to. Create a plan and a strategy, how you're going to get there, what investment is needed to get there. Constantly implement and report on, on performances as well. So,
and there's, there's of support out there as well, for all of us, and I would highlight a few. So, Business in the Community. Kevin, again, in his presentation, highlighted BITC. They're a local organisation and they can help you get started on your journey. They've got the BITCNI Climate Action Pledge, which you can all sign up to. It's a really good place to start with regards reporting. The UK Green Building Council is another really good resource. On their website,
they've got lots of template carbon reduction plans, and so on there as well. So, I'd encourage you to go there and, and look at that. And then, we ourselves have got the six, six step guide to getting started with ESG and sustainability reporting. So, I'll share that with Invest NI and maybe that could be shared with
delegates here today as well, it's just a- It's a full ESG guide but, obviously, net zero is part of that, so we can share that with you all as well. Okay, so just to wrap up and take a look at some examples, they are SustainIQ customers that we're going to look at, just to give you a little bit more information about SustainIQ itself. So, it's a software solution built across those four pillars because, for us, it was important that we built a solution that captured data from all aspects of sustainability. There's lots of
standalone elements out there but we understand the power of bringing it all into one place, one dashboard, and so we achieved that by building SustainIQ across the four pillars that you see on-screen. So, responsible procurement focuses on all things to do with supply chain, products and materials. We've, we've just launched a, a, an embodied carbon calculator for products and material. It's a prototype that's currently being tested, and we rely heavily on the likes of the EPDs, Environmental Product Declarations from the manufacturers to do that. We've integrated with things like BIM so we can pull through the design stage lists of products and materials as, as well. And there's a supply chain portal in there, where you-, our customers can then collaborate with their supply chain because, again, looking at the direction of travel here, it's going to be really, really important that our customers can engage with their, particularly their key suppliers. They're going to be setting specific targets for those key suppliers
over the coming years, and they need a space to collaborate and work together, in order to achieve those, those goals. The environmental management pillar then, it just tracks all of the environmental performance across all projects, office, factories, all waste management, all greenhouse gas emissions, scope one, two and three, biodiversity, water usage, and so on. People, health and diversity, then, is us moving into social values. So, typically there, we would be capturing apprenticeships and placements opportunities that are-, that are being created, health and wellbeing, diversity and inclusivity, training and development, safety, and so on. And then the fourth and final pillar is community engagement and
partnering. So, there we track all of the performance around community initiatives, volunteering, charitable donations, school engagement. So, we bring all of that in to one big central dashboard, and we do that through lots of different ways. We've got an API which allows for connectivity, so we can pull data automatically from different places. We've got bulk uploads so spreadsheets can go in very easily, and then we've got the SustainIQ app, where site teams are actually logging information straight into the app manually as well. So, it
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