A Pretty Stunning Graph of World Cement Usage (and China Is Certainly Using It)

A Pretty Stunning Graph of World Cement Usage (and China Is Certainly Using It)

www.theoildrum.com

Cement production can be considered a rough proxy for the total amount of construction going on in a country.

The growth in China, from 1 GT to 1.3 GT in two years is mindboggling, even India and Russia are interesting...

(visit the link for the full news article)

I thought it was bad, but China uses 50% of the world's concrete as of 2007. Think about that.

www.theoildrum.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Think about this, everything destroyed in the earthquake will have to be rebuilt and repaired and the Chinese government has already acknowledged that it needs to shore up many other government buildings such as schools as well as dams to protect against future quakes. All of that will increase their cement consumption by a great deal. This is just one reason US highway projects are costing far more today than they did even 2 years ago.

That is a lot, but then they have over a billion people to house, and their economy just got going for real about 8 years ago, and they've got about a century of so of catching up to do.

reply to post by profgoose


Why is that bad? That 1.4 billion people are hitting western standard of living and membership into the middle class? There's a demand for housing so they are building them, no big deal.

Click through to the reports. These graphs are mislabelled. This is about production not consumption

minerals.usgs.gov...

minerals.usgs.gov...

Sorry about the PDFs.

So based on current political thinking, the UN should "tax" cement......just like congress whats to add "windfall taxes" to oil............

reply to post by sardion2000


As a couple of folks pointed out--I have interchanged "production" and "usage" in this post and on the graph incorrectly--however, China's 2007 cement exports were 33 million tons out of 1.3 billion tons produced. (www.pr-inside.com... 41667.htm) So, at least for China, production is a good proxy for demand/consumption. My apologies for the mistake.

On the per capita point above...

What is more astonishing to me is that even in per capita usage China beats just about everyone else by several factors (back of the envelope: China ~1 ton/capita; US ~0.3 t/c, Russia ~0.5 t/c). There must be an amazing construction activity going on there.

Worse, think about poor India at ~0.1 t/c...and if they ever "turn it on..."

China has alot of large scale projects going on. The 3 Gorges dam alone consumed millions of tons.

Whats not mentioned is as the article states Chinas cemment industry is 80% coal fired and lets face it the communist giant seems to care little for the environment (or its workers esp. its coal miners) so this boom will have a huge long term cost related to polution etc.

China as I recall also makes most of there roads out of cement instead of cement. I know a man that spent 2 years there in the mountains and he said they had a huge airport out there for the military and its landing strip was made from cement. Cement has been something they have been using for years for things like that unlike us here in the USA which use black top for roads and have to repair them almost yearly. the cement can withstand to minus 50 below temps without cracking and 190 degree temps without cracking. So therefor its well worth using.

Hilda