It is a pleasure for me to be with you today. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that you can share your questions and comments to the different chats and different platforms where we are transmitting or broadcasting this webinar. I'd like to share with you email for communications in case there are any doubts or questions. You can share them to that channel as well. This is comexternas@argos.com.co. comexternas@argos.com.co. As a citizen of this world, I believe that with small actions, we can contribute to the purpose of mitigating climate change, but without doubt, as part of a team such as Cementos Argos, we can do so much more.
Today, we gather in a very interesting conversation, not just for Argos, but for all of the actors of society. It is that climate change, as its challenge, is also an opportunity, a unique one, for us to move forward together in the construction of the sustainable world that we dream of. In Argos, we assume climate change as a challenge. Also as a unique opportunity for our operations and our chain of value. Today, we will address in detail on our strategy for climate change. We will be accompanied by María Isabel Echeverri, Vicepresidente Legal y de Sostenibilidad, Cementos Argos. Also, Edgar Martinez, our Promise Manager for Environmental and Community Strategies, Executive Director for Health and Sustainable Communities, and also our Director for the Caribbean region and Central America. We are accompanied by collaborators and external actors and components.
We encourage you to publish in your social networks with the hashtag Argos Somos Pragmáticos, whatever content you wish to publish. I'd like to welcome our Legal and Sustainability President, María Isabel Echeverri, to talk to you about how we perceive climate change within our company. Maria?
Thank you, Daniel, and a cordial greeting to everyone. We're happy to speak to you about a subject that we're passionate about in Argos, and with which we are very committed to. It's very important for us to be able to talk to you face-to-face about these subjects, because the first vision that we have of climate change is that we have to work on it together, that it's not something that each individual can do on his own, that we can all contribute, but it's something that has to be done in collaboration.
We have assumed it as a challenge and as an opportunity. We've made a commitment to use our capacities as best as we can to adapt to climate change, and we're seeking to contribute to competitiveness and the growth of the companies, whether it be you as our groups of interest. It's been over 10, 15 years working on the reduction of our carbon footprint. In that time, through a lot of effort, we've been able to reduce our emissions by 14% since 2006, which is our baseline year. We have committed to work on this in three lines of action, which are, in terms of mitigation, the reduction of our carbon emissions, direct and indirect.
In terms of adaptation, we've worked a lot to develop our capacities to respond efficiently to the effects of climate change, to all of the situations that we, as human beings, see constantly: floods, landslides, warming, among others. How we, as human beings in this company, have developed capacity to respond to these effects. In terms of compensation, we've worked on research and development of actions for innovation, such as the capture of carbon and many others that we're constantly at work on in order to achieve our long-term goals, which I will mention now. It is that we've established two large goals as a corporation, as an industry. The first is that by 2030, we have the goal of reducing our CO2 emissions by 50%.
The second one, which we'll be collaborating as an industry, is that by 2050, we want to be able to produce a concrete that is carbon neutral. That's a great challenge today for science, for the industry, and for us as a company, but we are convinced that we can achieve this, and we will be leveraging several matters. The first, the reduction of physical risks and a transition into climate change, and how do we differentiate all of the opportunities associated with the application of our products with sustainability characteristics, which later on we'll be talking about, and we're very proud of them. Of course, we believe we can make a very relevant contribution to this process. The next point is how do we carry out more efficient processes, increasing productivity while decreasing our environmental impact.
Another subject that I'll be hearing about during this session is innovation, our constant search for innovation. As you can see in my background, this is one of the projects that we're very proud of, which is the microalgae project, and Edgar Luis will be speaking about this later on. We are, of course, applying all of our capacity for innovation to seek something that will allow us to capture that carbon and use it at a more advanced level, something else that we work on that we believe will be relevant in the medium term is access to mechanisms for sustainable financing. We are so committed to climate change that we have even linked our debt and rates of interest to the fulfillment of indicators associated with sustainability, and especially climate change.
If we meet these goals that we have set in the medium and long term, we will have a possibility to have better costs in terms of our debt. If we don't meet those goals, we're in big trouble. Another matter that we work on continuously, which is also a point of leverage, is how our decisions and corporate governance decisions lead us toward our goals. When we as a company are making decisions regarding production and investment, how do we consider or take into account the impact in our plans in the medium and long term? How we apply an internal carbon price for our uses. When we're thinking of an investment, how do we determine whether that investment will have a positive impact or not in terms of climate change?
Whether we approve or how we perceive that investment internally, that helps us to prioritize. To conclude and tell you that we're absolutely committed to contributing to the competitiveness and growth, not just of the company, but of our groups of interest with these long-term goals that I've mentioned, especially the one that we've stated that we're going to work hand in hand with the industry and has been led by the Global Cement and Concrete Association, which is to have a carbon-neutral concrete by 2050. To us, if we're able to reach these goals, then we will be creating social value for all of our groups of interest. With this, I conclude. We're going to have an interesting conversation, and I'd like to invite all of you.
Each of you has something to contribute in this process, from your business, from your home, from your individuality, but also as our collectives. We can all contribute to this purpose. Before we go into detail on the progress of our goals within our Climate Change Strategy, I'd like to hear from Luis Fernando Wall, Environmental Director for the Caribbean and Central American region, to talk to us about all of this.
Thank you, Juanita, and good morning, everyone. I'm going to explain a little bit about the theory behind this climate change. We live on planet Earth, and it has specific conditions that allow for us to be here, for us to live. For those conditions to take place, well, the Earth is covered by a layer of gases called our atmosphere, and the atmosphere is made up of greenhouse gases.
Naturally, there is CO2 in the atmosphere. What that layer of gases does is filter the entry of the sun's rays and keep some in in order to allow us a certain temperature and release others. After the Industrial Revolution, when we began to use fossil fuels, coal, petroleum, then we started to generate more CO2. That layer of gases are subject to grow. As it becomes thicker, it means that the sun's rays have to trap and warm up the Earth. The gases keep them in. They cannot leave at the rate that they used to. In the last 150 years, the average temperature of the Earth has increased by one degree. Our body temperature is always between a certain temperature. If we increase one degree in our bodies, we're in a fever already.
That's what's happening to the Earth. It is warming up too much. It's having a fever. As Juanita mentioned, and everyone who participated in the video that we saw at the beginning, the effects of the Earth increasing in temperature by one or two degrees, well, we're already noticing them with more catastrophic events, the melting of the poles, the average level of the ocean, even. As we start to see these consequences, what we need or what we seek is to decelerate that rapid change that we're going through. That's why we're all here as citizens of the world, as a corporation, as a government, and different groups of interest, and as individuals, we all play a part in this process of preventing or mitigating the warming of our temperature.
Now we'll continue with Juan Martinez, manager of Climate Promise and Communities for Argos. Talk to us about how we perceive this process within Argos and to talk about different projects for this strategy.
Thank you, Juan. Good morning. We in Argos are aware of the impact that our industry has and our activities have in the countries where we operate and where economic growth is impacted by the construction industry, and this has an impact on the wellbeing of communities. We believe that our business should be sustainable throughout time. As Maria Jose mentioned earlier, we have committed to certain interesting goals, including the reduction of CO2 emissions per ton of cement. By 2030, we're committed to reaching a 29% reduction of CO2 emissions per ton of production. By 2050, we are committed to having products in concrete that are carbon neutral.
To achieve this, we have three points of leverage in our climate change strategy. Number one is the reduction of its calorie consumption per kilo of clinker produced, and we've been working on it in some of the regions of the U.S. and have certifications that we've obtained for energy efficiency. Also, the second point is the reduction of the clinker's cement factor. For this, we've been working arduously with the operation, with research and development, and all of the innovation projects and having products that are mixed with other materials and limestones.
This is one of the topics we're working on, incorporating more supplementary materials that will help us to reduce the amount of clinker that we've incorporated in our cement. We also have the third piece of leverage, which is the increase and the substitution of conventional fuels for alternative fuels.
We want to do this, and we want to have a greater increase by 2050. We've been working in our three regions in Colombia, Central America, and in the United States, in the incorporation of other materials. In fact, as María Isabel Echeverri shared here in our background, we have the microalgae pilot, which is a beautiful project that we've been working on for many years. Today, we share this here. It's one of these things that we know we have to continue supporting as an industry because there are many opportunities that we can transform the CO2 into other products.
This project over here seeks that the capture of CO2 in order to transform it into a product. There's a very dedicated team working on R&D, and we work at seeking renewable electric energy sources. This is one of the endeavors.
We have this solar farm, which is one of those projects that we also feel is beautiful, and for the rest of the industry to also invest in this and see it the way that we have. We also work with the supply chain, where we have electric vehicles, hybrid vehicles, and natural gas-based vehicles. In terms of electric energy, we're constantly seeking for our providers to offer energy from renewable sources. We have a clear objective, which is to become a point of reference in terms of sustainability, not just in the sector, but in the world. I'll start to talk to us about the role of our vendors, our clients, and other groups of interest regarding this strategy. For us, our groups of interest are fundamental. It is with them that we interact on a day-to-day basis.
I'd like to say that initially, we counted our CO2 emissions, direct and indirect. In this case, when we talk about groups of interest that are outside of our operation, we've started to work on the tracking of our direct and indirect emissions. One of the most important categories that we've been working on is when we purchase clinker for the mills where we don't produce it. We continue those tasks that we do continuously in order to know how we're doing, and we have many initiatives with groups of interest and vendors.
We carry out the determination of carbon footprints of the transport providers, of the services that we use to transport raw materials and then deliver product. In Bocagrande and Mejia, we've done this task and have identified some very interesting opportunities for improvement that have led to plans and actions with these vendors.
We also have the sustainability index of vendors that we developed with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT. We've identified some gaps and many opportunities that have helped us to improve this relationship with our vendors and also understand how we are impacting our CO2 emissions. We see other kinds of actions arise for seeking improvement and with vendors of alternative fuel seeking negotiations that ensure that supply chain, which is so important when we have co-processing implemented in some of the plants. We make a lot of purchases from local vendors, and you might say that 41% of our purchases are from local vendors, which is important because it reduces transport. In this case, we talk about maritime transport, which this helps to reduce the impact. This is how we're reducing emissions and supporting the governments in different countries.
We've been recognized by Carbon Disclosure Project as a leading company in the Supplier Engagement Rating in which when we speak about our relationship to our vendors. Now, in climate change solutions, we've been offering a portfolio of Green Solutions, and we've launched multiple products in our different operations, and we have cement and concrete with sustainability practices. Sustainability, there's an important factor, which is the analysis of life cycle, which allows us to quantify the reduction of CO2 emissions in order to communicate in our technical sheets and in our Environmental Product Declarations, also to show the transparency of the processes and products that we consider green.
We're constantly speaking with clients to find the best solutions and help them to reduce their emissions. This has helped to strengthen our value chain and finally to maximize the impact of construction for a sustainable future.
There's something quite beautiful that we've been doing, which is the way that we promote a sustainable culture, because it's not just a matter of doing this in the operation and working with our vendors. It's also about how we carry this to our communities around us and the countries that we have operations. This is how we have activities like the Sustainability Dialogues and the Integrated Report. We show everything that we do, this is open for all of the constant interests. We have Sustainability Week, which is three to four events that we carry out within the company. Also the impact of using alternative fuels and seeking to reduce our own emissions. We're having a direct impact here. As the landfills are where potentially we could have open burns of garbage, we are reducing our impact there.
For example, with landfills, when waste arrives in decomposition processes, it generates other greenhouse gases which have an even greater warming impact than CO2. This is part of the impact and the work that we're doing with collaborators. We have a recognition within the company called Green Plants, where we promote good environmental practices. Of course, one of the items that this covers here is the reduction of CO2 emissions. Before COVID, which has changed so many things for us, we had a program for electric bicycles and carpooling. With our work from home, things have changed somewhat, but we are now estimating the emissions that have been reduced thanks to our remote work. This is an important impact. Within our company's compensation system, we have incentives for operational results associated to the reduction of CO2 emissions.
Thank you, Danny. I hope I haven't taken too long. No, that was perfect. We'd like to hear from Travis Reed, Executive Director for Health and Environmental Processes in the U.S., to hear about our strategy in the U.S. and some of the main projects taking place there.
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We also have the reduction of the clinkers in the cements factor. Here, the work that is done in terms of research and development is important because we are seeking to have less and less clinker in the different cements that we produce and assuring that we deliver the same performance to our clients and to the projects themselves. The substitution of conventional fuels for alternatives is fundamental and driving what Travis mentioned in terms of circular economy. We also have work that we have been seeking to have products that contribute to circular economy and to reutilizing them.
This is why recycled concrete is an important subject and the promotion of the cements with low emissions and then from a transparency perspective, the sort of multi-brand analysis of life cycle to understand what we are actually achieving in these processes. Now I would like to hear from Travis on the same subject.
Do you generally produce CO2 emissions in the U.S.A.?
That's a tough one. I would say the actual emissions, the best thing that you can do would be the alternate fuels. I hadn't thought about it a lot, but there are some projects and staff research and development are working on for CCUS, which is carbon capture use and storage. There's a lot to learn there, in that regard. The best thing we can do, for one, would be to look at alternate materials on the front end to prevent those emissions from being emitted in the first place. You got alternate raw materials, you got alternate fuels. Those are two of the levers that you can pull. You look at your emission efficiency. That's the third lever, right?
Once you employ all those, at that point, you have to look at the technology to try to capture the carbon and then pull it out of the sack. We've got the algae testers going on that's being tested down in the Innovation Center in Colombia. Some of the microalgae, we're looking at doing a pilot and doing a study here at our Newberry plant in Florida. There's other technologies where you can convert these CO2 emissions and go through a cryogenic process and make dry ice out of it and capture it. There's some other technologies out there that can be employed at our cement plants. I think it's a bit early, and we haven't done a lot of testing in some of those technologies to date.
Thank you, Travis.
We have another question. It says the objectives of climate change are validated by Science Based Targets. Each of us, you can help us to answer this question.
Of course, Danny. First of all, we're passionate about it, but to connect it with what Travis was just stating, it is for everyone to know what those Science Based Targets are. It's a global initiative which validates that the goals that a company sets will achieve the goals that we've set as a society in the Paris Agreement of reducing the temperature of the planet. What we do as companies is that our goals and plans in terms of climate change are presented to a group of experts that validate that these plans do align in terms of helping to achieve those goals.
As an organization, at the beginning of this year, we presented and signed the letter of commitment that has to be in time to participate in the process of validation of the goals with this mechanism. We are working on fine-tuning our route country by country and region by region, where we have those commitments all defined, and the idea is to submit these to the Science Based Targets initiative within the coming months. It's a process that there are several phases to it that we believe which is well-constructed and very solid, and that it will be approved by the initiative.
We are articulating not just as a company but as an industry to achieve the goals that we have set as a society in the Paris Agreement and whatever adjustments has needed to be made throughout these years.
Here's another one. When will you go from the pilot of microalgae in Cartagena into a real project? Can you please answer to this?
Yes. First of all, the current pilot in Cartagena is serving to validate in a real environment that the microalgae technology actually works. Right now, we are identifying critical processes between that technology. Basically what we have found so far is that we've had better performances than what the literature shows and what's happening in the world. The pilot gets stronger and stronger, it becomes more and more important to us to grow with it. We are thinking about broadening the capacity of this project in the Pacific Northwest, which is where our current pilot is. In some other geographies, we want in the short term to implement new pilots. That's basically it.
Okay, looks we have another question here. It says, "Why is the goal by 2030 to have a reduction of 21% if the country goal is 51%?"
Yes, it's important here to highlight that although this organization is not just Colombian, we have presence in over 17 countries. Each of these countries has established its individual goals, and there are, of course, specific contributions in each of these countries. Over 70% of our revenue and our production is coming from countries other than Colombia.
We've included all of the regions in this, all of the operations and businesses throughout our entire value chain. In terms of reduction, it gives the goal that we have right now. As I've mentioned, we have a goal for 2030 and another for 2050. The one for 2050 is the one that's very challenging right now because producing carbon-neutral concrete today scientifically is not possible.
It is not possible today because the mechanisms for carbon capture storage and carbon emissions today at an industrial level are not completely established and defined. As an industry, we will work collectively to develop them. At least this is a process that involves all of the different points of leverage that we've mentioned, be it altering the fuels, reducing the cement relationship, and being more efficient. There's another part that has to happen, which has to do with capturing that carbon and using it in other processes and using it for plenty of good things. Today, the science is not there at an industrial level, so we have to continue investigating and working, and this is why that goal is a bit farther than that. 2050, we hope that we will achieve some great reductions.
Here we want to know more about that process with microalgae. I think more than compensation, what we do is a capture of carbon. We have the four hierarchies of the different types of environmental impacts. When we speak specifically about everything we're doing right now, we're aiming for mitigation. This is how we're improving our process as Travis had explained. All of the processes that we're doing now are directed towards mitigation and reduction of our emissions. Compensation would be things like buying plants, planting trees, and payments for environmental services. The microalgae, they are in the category of capture. This means that in the environment, there's CO2, and what the algae does is absorb that CO2. Microalgae would be more an option for capture than compensation.
Thank you, and we have another interesting one. The change to new energy sources, does it generate a reduction or will this increase the cost of the product?" I'd like to hear an answer from Edgar.
I imagine we're talking about renewable energies and as in the development of any new process, things are cheaper at the beginning. We've seen the example with solar panels from 2015, some years ago. The answer to this is that, sure, we will have things that we'll be able to invest in quickly, which is the low-hanging fruit, essentially, that we can use to reduce emissions.
There are also the factors that haven't quite been invented yet. They can't be implemented because of the cost right now, which is why we have the commitment to continue working and reducing our emissions to 2030 and to anticipate in the development of solutions.
Thank you, Edgar. We have another one from Ernesto.
How does this articulate with our governance goals and national registries? How does all of this articulate?
This is a matter that we work on, not just at a Colombian level, but in each of the countries where we're present. I'll talk about the Colombian case first. These things have sector-based goals. What the government does, and the industry and commerce, together with other institutions, they establish a set of goals per sector based on interactions and participations that we've had. They set those goals, based on this, we report to the government periodically. In our case, to the Colombian government, this happens in every country where they have set their goals as well. Some are more advanced than others, some are more challenging than others.
In each country where we are present, we try to be very participative in the conversation with the government and understand how we can contribute to those goals. This brings a reporting commitment that we have to address periodically. The main source, and for those of you who are interested in learning about this, is our Integrated Report. Every year, we publish a detailed report with the progress on our climate change strategy. In addition, we participate with PROCEMCO in the Colombian case, FICEM, which is the Inter-American Cement Federation, the PCA in the United States. We try to participate in all of those conversations so that the construction of those guidelines are actually based on reality, and it's not just someone saying that the goal shouldn't be this much, it should be 70%.
You can talk about miracles, but we should set goals that are actually realistic. This is why we try to participate in all of these conversations. We are very transparent with the information that we provide. We report periodically, not just to them, but to all of our groups of interest, because we want to carry out some real follow-up on this plan in order to achieve it.
Thank you, María. Here we have another question that I would also like your help to answer, and it is, when will our Green Solutions portfolio arrive in other countries?
Now here, we carried out a launch of that portfolio for Green Solutions because we wanted to articulate and give a more relevant presence and a clear understanding to our clients regarding what we do in terms of products and the options that we have for them.
In all locations, we see the same thing. Today, we have many products with sustainability characteristics that are in the market now. In Central America and the Caribbean, we have products such as self-compacting concrete in adaptation to the circular economy. We have the multipurpose eco cement, which is low in carbon. We have other cements that benefit the well-being of a person because they contribute to luminosity or heating, such as maybe white cement, permeable concretes, and concretes for pavements. In the United States, we have a very important group of products that meet those conditions of sustainability characteristics. We try the Green Cement, PLC cement, masonry cement. There's a large list of products that we are making now.
When we speak of those Green Solutions, what we do is an explanation and a promotion so that our clients can see in that portfolio all of the possible solutions for these impacts. We have, again, these partners in different countries. We are in the process, in terms of communications and marketing, of divulging these in a more articulate manner so that the other clients can access this portfolio of Green Solutions.
We have another one from Luis.
How do we guarantee the implementation of initiatives from the vendors that help us to achieve our climate change goals?
First, our goals must lead by example, and this is the only way that we can inspire our vendors and groups of interest to implement initiatives associated to the reduction of CO2 emissions. Particularly, we have mechanisms for strengthening our team of vendors around climate change and sustainability. Right now, specifically, we have something which is the Sustainability Evaluation, which comprises a classification, to understand at what point they stand now and for us to build plans together to develop that capacity for sustainability in business and in cement.
The results of that evaluation help us to understand what we can improve so that that group of interest can also minimize their impact in terms of CO2. This is how we articulate our facilities to help us to leverage our process into these. There's another concept here with co-processing. How does this work in Colombia and the U.S.? Can you talk to us a bit about this? Can you repeat the question? We can know about co-processing and how it works. Okay.
Co-processing is the way that you take in subproducts from another industry and incorporate them into your process as a product so that you can have your final product, which in this case is cement. We can see examples like the use of used tires that we can substitute as fuel in the process of clinker production. There are also other types of products that arise from industries like the Colombian steel, the oil pump, where we see waste with a calorie potential that can be brought to the process to replace some carbon in the production of clinker. This is why I had mentioned for us in our supply chains, it's important to find these types of products with vendors that allow us to commit to achieving our goals.
It's not much use for us to make a commitment and set up installations and then not have the products available. This is fundamental. Co-processing is all about using subproducts or wastes in order to achieve a result. Thank you, thanks to everyone who's participated this morning. We have four minutes left. I would like for María Isabel Echeverri, our Legal VP for Sustainability, to give us a closing message. I'd like to remind you that we have an email where you can share your questions if they weren't addressed during the session, comexternas@argos.com.co. Through our social networks and our website, we will be addressing progress regarding the processes of our climate change strategy. Thank you.
Thank you, Danny. I would like to thank everyone for your participation.
We're enthusiastic about seeing your interest in the subject and the contribution that we can make as a company in the process. We are absolutely committed to mitigating climate change. It is a global phenomenon that affects all of us, and this is why we're working hard, and this year we have a more detailed plan that will allow us to identify all of the projects that will help us to achieve this goal and to quantify the investments required for this. This does require a significant effort from our part, and again, we are absolutely committed to these goals that we've expressed throughout the webinar. We want to reduce our emissions by 21% by 2030, and by 2050, we'd like to produce a concrete that is carbon neutral.
This, together with our allies and colleagues in the industry and cement and concrete association, where we're joining efforts to investigate together and work on funding options that could exist at an industrial level and that will allow us to reduce our impact significantly. Thanks, everyone, again for your interest. I hope that you can continue working with us. Everyone from your businesses, from your homes, you can contribute so much, and we have to be more and more aware that every action we take as humans and as companies impacts others.
That collaborative spirit has to be present. Otherwise, we won't have quality of life. We won't even have a planet to leave behind for others. We're already seeing these situations like what we're experiencing today of floods, disease. All of this is connected. The changes of conditions that we're facing on the planet.
This is an invitation to continue working with enthusiasm so that we can continue creating social value for everyone. Thank you.