INTERVIEW: Paebbl on the road to commercial-scale carbon-storing cement

Paebbl is one of the new companies developing supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs) to reduce the carbon footprint of the cement and concrete industry. By using accelerated mineralization, the company transforms captured CO₂ into a stable, light gray mineral powder that can serve as a partial replacement for traditional cement, offering a pathway to lower-carbon construction materials.

Co-founder and co-CEO Marta Sjögren discussed Paebbl's progress from its demonstration plant in Rotterdam to plans for commercial-scale production in an interview with Platts, part of S&P Global Energy. Sjögren shared insights on the company's deployment strategy, market focus, partnerships and how Paebbl is addressing technical acceptance and evolving market dynamics for SCMs.

The interview has been edited for space and clarity.

What has the first year at the demo plant focused on, and what are the next steps for full-scale production?

The first year was about getting it up and proving that continuous mineralization works — and it does. That was last year. This year is about increasing uptime and fine-tuning the product, the process, and the technology choices. The next one will be a first-of-a-kind commercial production plant. That will generate 60,000 to 100,000 tons of product per year. It's going to be a proper commercial-scale plant.

How will Paebbl approach early deployment and commercialization?

To begin with, we're going to be an owner-operator, or at the very least a co-owner and operator. Why? Because this will give us the ability to optimize future designs and then create the licensing model. Our vision is to build the first few plants ourselves, and then maybe co-build them with customers. They're always co-located with something. In some cases, we'll co-locate with the CO₂ source; in other cases, we'll co-locate with the source of minerals, or a port, or something else. The idea is never to do a purely greenfield project — it's always connected to some part of industry. Then we'll launch a licensing model as soon as the technology is proven at scale. We might even launch licensing much earlier.

Where is your main market focus, and what demand are you seeing?

We're definitely more focused on Europe. We do, however, have global customers and partners — like Amazon — who are impressed with what they've experienced in Europe. For example, with Amazon, we launched the world's first carbon-storing data center. It was a pilot with a small amount of material, but in any case, it was the first four walls that are carbon-storing. And they would like to bring this to other parts of the world as well. So far we've deployed about 20 tons of product in the market, and we've generated a few thousand times more demand than that. I can't be too specific right now, but we've generated a lot of demand with very little material. That's been across Europe, and it's now spreading to North America.

How are you building partnerships and market knowledge?

We mapped out the value chain. We looked for vested interests across the value chain to adopt this material. The natural progression would be cement, concrete, general contractors, real estate developers, and ultimately asset owners. We selected partners from each part of this value chain. We also realized that if we went only with cement, we'd never have negotiation power — so we went to their customers and their customers' customers to generate market knowledge on carbon-negative building materials. That gave us a portfolio of projects such that the cement world paid attention and realized there might be a market for this material. It's not just price competition against legacy products. It's also: what are you trying to do with your real estate assets? Are you building resilient assets for decades or centuries? Then you might as well use green building materials, not gray cement. That's been decisive.

How do you address technical acceptance and performance?

We're trying to lead by example. In our customer contracts, we retain access to metadata. That's essential for us to derisk the technology and help others gain trust in it. We've gone through extensive technical reviews — third-party with a customer, and our own — to ensure adherence to standards and that there's no degradation in concrete quality. That's been essential. Then the 'magic' is how much replacement you do. We've done about 10% to 30% replacement rates, depending on the application and the country.

How do you view the current SCM market and competition?

SCM pricing can go anywhere. In some places it's even higher than clinker, because people realize you can replace clinker and also get environmental attributes — so in some cases you see it up around Eur200/metric ton. There are short-term agendas around price competition, but the longer-term agenda is to decrease reliance on OPC. The more you use other materials, the more you can set customer expectations around calcined clay, fly ash, or whatever you're using — and that's part of the shift.