PREDICTING A GREEN REVOLUTION

Donal O'Riain Founder of Ecocem

Finding and processing the raw materials needed to produce green cement is not an easy task. Donal O’Riain tells Niamh MacSweeney why Ecocem’s green cement is in such high demand and why it is important for Ireland to maintain its green industries.

If you open a newspaper or turn on the TV you are bound to see something about the negative effects that our energy guzzling lifestyles are having on the environment. The world as a whole is under increasing pressure to make concerted efforts to mend our polluting ways and because of this new found environmental consciousness, green energy is fast becoming a emerging sector that is experiencing noticeable buoyancy. But while we may now be more aware of our commitment to combat climate change, the entrepreneurs who had the foresight to envisage that the green industry would be lucrative, at a time when we were less conscious of our environmental responsibilities, are the ones reaping the benefits.

Anticipating Change

One entrepreneur with this vision is Donal O’Riain founder of Ecocem, a company that produces green cement. With one processing plant in Benelux and one in Ireland O’Riain agrees that when he started Ecocem the idea of green or environmental products was not as widely appreciated as it is today. “When we started there was none of the buzz around about green products, but ten years later and we correctly anticipated that there would be an emerging demand for environmentally friendly products because of climate change and because of the likely adoption of the Kyoto Treaty.” O’Riain admits he took a calculated risk and anticipated that in the coming years governments would eventually be forced to adopted serious measures to reduce CO2 emissions. He knew that if this happened his company would be in an increasingly favourable position, so long as they had a product with a unique advantage in terms of the environmental credentials.

With obvious pride in his product O’Riain talks with passion about how his green cement is not only environmentally green and therefore completely different from conventional cement, but from a technical point of view he refers to it as a “superior” to conventional cement. “We aren’t compromising anything in terms of technical performance or in terms of value for money for the customer. We aren’t asking the customer to pay more for the product or to expect lower standards. In fact quite the opposite; we are giving them better value for money and higher standards at the same time by providing a product that has no negative impact on the environment and particularly on global warming,” he says.

O’Riain claims that more than half the concrete manufacturers in Ireland, of any significance, use Ecocem’s product and says that anyone building a house can request green cement. “Customers, using professional architectural engineers to design or look after the management of their construction project, can ask their architect or engineer to specify that the concrete that they supply to the site should be environmentally friendly.” He reveals that his company gets calls regularly from individuals seeking advice on that very question and says that they are all quickly referred to local concrete suppliers who stock Ecocem products. He also says that for people who want to make a difference it need not cost them anything extra to show little care.

Cutting Back On Consumption

“There is about 25 tonnes of cement that goes into an average house and that means effectively 25 tonnes of CO2 emission to the atmosphere. If you specify our product you can cut that almost in half so you save about 12 tonnes of CO2 to the atmosphere. It wont cost you any more and the quality of the concrete will be far superior than what you may achieve with ordinary cement,” O’Riain says.

While there is little difference between conventional cement and green cement when it comes to heating a home O’Riain is quick to point out that although there is minimal impact on the operating energy of a house by using green cement the positive gains are to be had during the actual construction of a house, due to the fact that so much energy goes into manufacturing the building materials and supplying the materials to the site. “The energy consumption for the typical Irish house revokes in emissions about six tonnes of CO2 per annum but in the building of a house you effectively cause the emissions of 25 tonnes so in other words that’s the equivalent of four years of living in that house and you can cut that in half by using our product,” the entrepreneur comments.

Meeting Demands

Convincing people of the product is perhaps the easy part, ensuring that supply meets demand is another obstacle of an altogether other name. O’Riain admits that while Ecocem have, through their Ireland and Benelux processing plants, plans for the next 10 years, they also know that they don’t have any instant solutions to ensure continued supply of green cement. “In order to process the materials we have to buy plants which are expensive to build and require sites and planning permission. By the time you find a site and get planning permission and then build the plant can be up to three years so there is a necessary time lag before we can make a significant difference to our available capacity. Even once you have done that there is no point in doing it unless you are sure you can buy the raw materials you need to process. In Europe the availability of the products that we need is very restricted indeed and there is great competition for those raw materials. Therefore we need to have a longterm supply contact with some of the limited numbers of the suppliers of the raw materials,” O’Riain explains.

Tough Competition

O’Riain admits that there is high demand for the product and increasingly stiff competition for the raw materials but that by looking at a three to five year horizon they will be able to increase capacity. “We are doing our best to produce as much as we can to meet demand and we are looking at a number of ways to be able to provide more product to the market but in reality those plans have to be long term plans,” he reveals.

Protecting Resources

O’Riain warns that it is extremely important for Ireland to maintain its green industry because many countries in Europe would love to take that opportunity away from Ireland by having those raw materials processed and used in their own countries. “We have a responsibility because it is very important for us to defend and maintain our credible economic operation here and provide good quality product and service to our customers.”

On the one hand Ecocem is a small company, but on the other hand they have huge suppliers and must vie for precious raw materials in a market with strong competition. ”The key to the longterm success of our business is by adding value to our product and we work hard at finding ways to do that and to enhance the appreciation of the value in the market,” concludes O’Riain.

ABOUT ECOCEM

Ecocem's environmentally friendly cement is a recycled product, manufactured from blastfurnace slag, a byproduct of steel-making.

• Its manufacture saves energy, CO2 and other emissions when compared to the manufacture of ordinary cement
• It is now widely used as an environmentally friendly cost-neutral alternative to ordinary cement on many major construction projects throughout Ireland
• By using Ecocem's cement, the environmental savings achieved to date in Ireland are the equivalent of taking 119,300 cars off the road for a year, and saving 140,400 years of electricity use in the average Irish home