Cemex was recently honoured with the Net-Zero Industries Award by Mission Innovation for our groundbreaking solar clinker project.

This Award celebrates outstanding innovations in industrial decarbonisation and is a testament to our company’s commitment and passion for innovation and a more sustainable future.

Our solar clinker project is a revolutionary initiative that uses solar energy (powered by Synhelion’s technology) to produce clinker and has the potential to significantly reduce our carbon footprint and move us closer to our goal of achieving net-zero CO? emissions. As Davide Zampini, our Vice President of Global R&D, stated, “Together with Synhelion, we are pioneering solar-powered clinker production, a breakthrough process that can decarbonise our Cement manufacturing and is a step toward solar-driven plants.”

You can watch Davide sharing the ‘Eureka Moment’ on this video HERE.

The cleantech company Synhelion has developed proprietary solar heat technologies to decarbonise industries. Cemex partnered with Synhelion in 2019 to reduce CO? emissions in Cement production. This collaboration led to a significant milestone in 2022 with the first successful production of solar clinker using a small-scale batch pilot process. Building on this success, the technology was scaled to industrially viable levels in 2023, enabling continuous clinker production—the most energy-intensive step in Cement manufacturing—using only solar heat. Cemex and Synhelion are advancing toward developing a solar-driven, industrial-scale pilot Cement plant.

Mission Innovation presented the Net-Zero Industries Awards in a ceremony during COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan. Mission Innovation is a global initiative to catalyse action and investment in research, development, and demonstration to make clean energy affordable, attractive, and accessible to all in this decade.

The full Net-Zero Industries Awards winners list is available at: https://mission-innovation.net/missions/net-zero-industries-mission/net-zero-industries-award-2024/