By Andrea Johnson
One of the Construction & Demolition Recycling Association’s (CDRA) core values is stewardship and advancement. Behind the scenes, the CDRA staff and board work diligently in support of this principle – not only for our members, but for the entire construction and demolition (C&D) recycling industry.
Over the past year we have been working closely with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) through an initiative called “Smart Sectors,” and the result is a real, near-term opportunity for recyclers who manufacture biofuels – or who are considering it – to help fuel the cement industry.
What Smart Sectors Is, and Why It Matters to Recyclers
The EPA’s Smart Sectors program launched in 2017 to re-examine how the agency engages with industry. Rather than working sector by sector through enforcement alone, Smart Sectors creates a structured channel for the EPA and major manufacturing sectors to develop practical solutions that support both environmental progress and economic growth.
The cement and concrete sector – NAICS 3273 – was one of the original Smart Sectors industries. For C&D recyclers, that focus matters. Cement production is one of the most energy-intensive industrial processes in the country, and it is one of the few with the high-temperature combustion and long residence times needed to turn engineered fuels from recycled materials into reliable energy.
Building on EPA’s September 2024 Fact Sheet on Clean Cellulosic Biomass and Non-Hazardous Secondary Materials Determinations – which clarified how clean cellulosic biomass can be classified and used as a fuel, and when it is considered equivalent to traditional fuels – the CDRA staff worked directly with the American Cement Association (ACA) throughout 2025 and into 2026 to translate that regulatory groundwork into something cement producers and recyclers could act on together.
Throughout this period, CDRA represented the interests of C&D recyclers directly to EPA and ACA, and ensured that the perspective of the operators who actually manufacture biofuels is part of the conversation. The Fact Sheet removed one of the single biggest barriers to growth; our ongoing collaboration with ACA has focused on the next set of barriers: education, market connections, and operator confidence.
Why the U.S. Lags on Biofuel Use
Biofuel use in cement is not new. In Europe, countries like Germany and the Netherlands routinely operate at 60% to 80% alternative fuel substitution rates using refuse-derived fuel and biomass, and a plant in Catalonia has achieved 100% alternative fuel use.
By contrast, only about 16% of U.S. cement kilns use biofuels as a meaningful energy source – even though 73% of U.S. cement plants use some form of alternative fuel (tire-derived fuel, waste oil, solvents and others). Biomass remains the underused category, and it is the one most directly served by C&D recyclers.
Across our meetings with the ACA and member cement producers, three concerns kept surfacing as the reasons for that gap:
- Low confidence in product quality from recycled materials.
- The capital cost to incorporate biofuel handling and feed systems into existing kiln operations.
- Uncertainty around consistent material volumes year-round.
Each of these is solvable – and each of them is a place where C&D recyclers, not cement producers, hold the answers.
Educating the Market: The March 19 Forum
Our first step was education. On March 19, EPA hosted a forum on using C&D wood as fuel in the cement industry. The supply story behind that forum is worth pausing on. The EPA estimates that 600 million tons of C&D debris were generated in the United States in 2018 – more than twice the amount of municipal solid waste.
Wood is the second-largest component of building-related C&D debris after concrete, contributing 20 to 30% of the total, and a meaningful share of that wood is suitable for processing into engineered biomass fuel. The raw material exists, in volume, in every region of the country.
To translate that potential into something cement producers could act on, CDRA assembled a panel of recyclers from our membership to share real-world examples of biofuel manufacturing already in production. The forum also featured CDRA member Heidelberg Materials, which presented one of its Canadian facilities currently operating on biofuel.
The Heidelberg presentation was a turning point in the conversation – it gave attendees a clear picture of the financial investment a cement kiln makes when it commits to biofuels, and the operational and emissions returns on that investment. Independent research consistently shows that replacing a portion of fossil fuel with alternative fuels reduces greenhouse gas emissions, and biomass-derived fuels carry favorable life-cycle carbon accounting when sourced from materials that would otherwise be landfilled.
The CDRA Expert Panel
Our panel was deliberately built from operators who can speak from the kiln floor and the tipping floor, not from theory:
- David Zwicky, president of Zwicky Recycling, one of the largest biofuel manufacturers in the country.
- Randy Wolf, COO of the Recycling Certification Institute, with more than 20 years of experience in the manufacturing of biofuels.
- Johannes Kohn, vice president of operations with WIN Waste Innovations, who oversees their biofuel manufacturing and drives their Waste-to-Energy programs.
- Allen Burns, owner of Burns Services, a recycler looking to expand into biofuel manufacturing.
- John Thomas, CDRA president and president of WR Solutions, who brought years of biofuel experience to round out the panel.
David Zwicky, Johannes Kohn and Allen Burns walked attendees through their facility processes – how material comes in the door, how it is sorted and conditioned, and how recyclers manufacture a quality, marketable end product. The goal was to make one point unmistakable: recyclers treat biofuel as a manufactured product, with specifications, quality control, and accountability to the customer. Whoever purchases the fuel can expect the same consistency they would expect from any conventional supplier.
The panel also addressed the kiln operators’ third concern – volume. By walking through their operations and inventory levels, the panelists made it clear that there is ample material across most of the country, year-round, to support biofuel programs at commercial scale. The supply is not the bottleneck. The relationship is.
What’s Next
The Forum was the first step. The next step is keeping conversations open and building durable relationships between recyclers and cement producers in the same geography. If you are a kiln who is interested in expanding your operation to include biofuel, the CDRA wants to hear from you.
Please reach out to me at ajohnson@cdrecycling.org and I will work to connect you with a recycler in your area. The market opportunity is real, the regulatory pathway is clearer than it has ever been and our industry is positioned to lead it.
Andrea Johnson is the executive director of CDRA.
