Projection of cement demand and analysis of the impacts of carbon tax on cement industry in China

Cement industry plays a vital role in the process of urbanization and industrialization in China. This paper disaggregates cement consumptions into five large subsectors: building, railway, highway, rural infrastructure and others. We suggest that cement demand will reach the peak of 2.5 billion tons in 2017, followed by a slowly reduction in the next 10 years and a gradually decrease from 2.3 billion tons in 2030 to 1.5 billion tons in 2050. Based on the scenarios analysis of China TIMES model, this paper shows that carbon tax doesn't work significantly on the technology choice and CO2 emission reduction in the short term. However, in a long run, high carbon tax may increase the application of production with CCS or wasted heat recovery and cut down the small- and medium-sized plants. Moreover, tax on all industries acts more effectively than that only on the cement industry. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.