Welsh Made Green Cement Leading The Way on Slashing CO2 Emissions
Written by Harry Turnbull
While the UK government prepares to spend billions funnelling CO₂ through vast pipelines and burying it under the sea, an innovative company is quietly proving there’s a simpler alternative: don’t produce the emissions in the first place.
Material Evolution’s production facility at Wrexham, is producing an ultra‑low‑carbon cement that cuts emissions by up to 85% without kilns, without heat and without the need for carbon capture. Its factory is already operating at scale, producing 120,000 tonnes a year. It is a working solution today — not a speculative technology for the 2030s.
Yet instead of backing this home‑grown innovation, ministers are pouring money into schemes like Hynet and Peak Cluster, designed to allow big industries to continue churning out products made from fossil fuels.
Peak Cluster is the latest scheme that has seen corporations in the Midlands making cement and lime persuade the government to pour taxpayers cash into pipelines that will preserve their companies and profits. It’s a lot easier when you employ public relations firms, lobbyists and have the ear of Ministers
The project will carve its way from the Midlands to the irish sea, slashing through communities, disrupting farmland and imposing industrial infrastructure on areas that never asked for it. Residents along the proposed route are already furious. Wirral councillors say Peak Cluster show “no intention” of listening to local concerns and made it clear the project would proceed regardless.
Green councillor Gail Jenkinson said it was “hard to think of a worse solution,” pointing to a 50‑metre chimney that would dominate the landscape and adding that the real answer is to stop producing the CO₂ at source. Even Labour councillors agree and the Public Accounts Committee has warned that the government is committing vast sums of taxpayer money to first‑of‑a‑kind, unproven technology with no guarantee of public benefit. The government has already abandoned its 2030 carbon‑capture targets, and none of the contracts include profit‑sharing or protections for consumers.
Meanwhile, Wales already has a functioning alternative — one that could remove the need for the pipeline entirely if built to scale. But Wrexham Labour MP Andrew Ranger was apparently unaware of this pioneering process developed by Materials Evolution but said he would be “happy to hear from them”. He then trotted out the usual government line:
“The growing negative impact of climate change on everyone’s lives is huge and we cannot continue to ignore it and not tackle it, it is our responsibility to our children, grandchildren and future generations to fix the mess we have made and that we have benefitted from. Therefore, it is incumbent on us to consider all solutions to this challenge including carbon capture projects as well as adopting new cleaner and greener manufacturing processes”.
The contrast is striking: innovation capable of transforming a polluting industry is struggling for recognition, while England‑based corporations have secured government backing for a disruptive mega‑project that preserves the status quo.
It leaves a blunt question hanging in the air: if cement of the future can be clean, why is Westminster spending billions to bury the past?
Dr Liz Gilligan, co-founder and CEO of Material Evolution, declined to comment on the CO2 pipeline row but in the past has said
“With cement imports having nearly tripled over the past two decades, the UK is missing a significant opportunity to reduce emissions while supporting local industry,” she said. “Low-carbon, locally sourced materials are proven to be scalable, reliable and economically viable — but procurement rules need to evolve to prioritise their adoption.”
While the Peak Cluster partners — including Breedon, Tarmac, Holcim and Buxton Lime — all publish extensive sustainability strategies and publicly commit to reducing their environmental impact, they have collectively chosen carbon capture as their preferred route to decarbonisation. Their argument is that the cement industry cannot transform overnight, and that capturing emissions after the fact is the most practical way to cut carbon quickly while maintaining production.
It is a position that has found a receptive audience in Westminster. The Peak Cluster pipeline is designed around this model: keep the existing high‑temperature kilns, keep the current processes, but capture the CO₂ and send it north for burial under the Irish Sea. It is a pathway that preserves continuity for industry — but it also requires vast new infrastructure, major disruption to communities, and billions in public funding
Peak Cluster’s chief executive Jon Egan insists the pipeline is essential.
“Peak Cluster is such an important project for Britain’s economy – helping to protect our vital industries and securing highly-skilled jobs,” he said. “With cement imports having tripled in the last 20 years, and domestic production at its lowest level since the 1950s, there has never been a greater need to build a resilient, sustainable supply. Peak Cluster will be the world’s largest cement and lime decarbonisation project – using proven technology to establish the UK as an international leader in responsible, sustainable manufacturing.”
But this confident language sits uneasily alongside the findings of Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee, which has warned that the government is backing “first-of-a-kind, unproven technologies” with vast amounts of taxpayer and consumer money. The PAC says ministers have no mechanism to ensure the public will benefit financially if the scheme succeeds, no assessment of whether the full programme is affordable, and no clear plan for how to respond if the technology underperforms or scientific understanding changes. The government has agreed with all of these criticisms.
About the author:
Harry Turnbull is an experienced journalist based in the north who has held a variety of reporting and editing roles in the media. He also writes a reviews column for the UK’s biggest archive of BBC radio dramas.
