The cement industry is the third largest carbon emitting industrial sector in the EU. The present work analyses the potential for improvement in the energy efficiency and CO2 emission reduction for this sector up to 2030. Three scenarios are analysed: baseline scenario (BS) representing the current evolution of the cement sector and two alternative scenarios (AS1 and AS2) studying respectively the sensitivity of fuel prices and CO2 emission prices. The results for the BS show an improvement in the thermal energy efficiency and the CO2 emissions per tonne of clinker respectively of 11% and 3.7% in 2030 compared with the level of 2002. However, for AS1 and AS2, these scenarios are insensitive to fuel and CO2 emission prices, respectively. This can be explained by the fact that a large number of retrofits are economically feasible in the BS, leading to a significant reduction in the thermal energy consumption. Crown Copyright (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.