Urban Mining Industries and S3 Markets said Oct. 14 they’ve issued environmental attribute certificates for Pozzotive, Urban Mining’s ground-glass pozzolan, and they’re calling them the first SCM environmental attribute certificates anywhere. The announcement didn’t include a price, a tonnage or a buyer.
The idea is to sell the carbon benefit of a supplementary cementitious material separately from the material itself. According to the companies’ joint release, the certificates move to buyers through a book-and-claim chain of custody. A developer in Texas could claim the reduction from glass pozzolan poured in the Northeast without trucking a ton of it.
How SCM environmental attribute certificates are supposed to work
The companies make two arguments. Cement is a spot market, so a new SCM plant can’t count on revenue, which makes it hard to finance. And a buyer who wants a low-carbon SCM may sit too far away for the freight to pencil, or for the carbon math to survive the trip. Long-term certificate contracts would give the producer bankable revenue and give the distant buyer a claim.
The release says issuance accounts for how the SCM affects a mix’s strength and for realistic replacement rates. That’s the right instinct. A pozzolan that needs more cementitious content to hit the same strength isn’t saving what its spec sheet says. The companies say they’ll align with emerging EAC standards for SCMs “where possible,” which means a common standard doesn’t exist yet.
Urban Mining says Pozzotive’s footprint is 93% lower than the cement it replaces. That’s a producer figure, and the release doesn’t name the verifier behind the certificates.
The supplementary cementitious material gap
The supply problem is real. Most SCM in U.S. concrete is fly ash from coal plants or slag from blast furnaces, and both shrink as coal plants close and ironmaking changes. Citing the Energy Department’s cement Liftoff report, the companies say the U.S. alone needs roughly 20 million more tons of SCM a year at current consumption. The IEA’s net zero roadmap treats lower clinker ratios as cement’s biggest near-term lever.
That’s why people keep trying to recover ash, like the pilot refinery at a dead Ohio coal plant, and why Type IL now dominates blended cement shipments. Ground glass comes from curbside recycling, which no closing power plant can take away.
What concrete buyers should ask about Pozzotive certificates
Pozzotive has a construction record. Urban Mining’s website carries a testimonial from Severud Associates crediting the material with more than 5,000 tons of embodied carbon savings on JPMorgan Chase’s global headquarters, and another from AECOM’s construction management group. Those are the company’s own testimonials.
The certificate program has none of that yet. Before an owner counts these toward a Scope 3 target, it’ll want answers the release skips. Who verifies the 93%? What’s the registry, and how is double counting blocked when the physical concrete also goes into a building with its own EPD? And what does a certificate cost against simply specifying the material locally?
Concrete Transition Capital’s CEO, Genevieve Rose Sherman, said novel SCMs “may be lower cost” and could widen EAC pricing. That’s a hope about the market, not a quote on this one. The first certificate exists. The first public price will tell contractors whether this is a financing tool or a press release.