The consumption of cement in India and other emerging economies is expected to increase because of the continuing push towards development of housing and infrastructure. The increasing production of cement and utilization of concrete are bound to have a major impact on sustainability. The present work proposes a framework for sustainability assessment, in terms of the CO 2 emissions and energy demand, that can be adopted in cases where suitable databases are not readily available. Case studies for cement manufacture have been considered in South India, with different system boundaries such as ground-to-gate, gate-to-gate and CSI. The assessment made using data from the plant and other sources highlights the benefits of using supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs) in terms of reducing the impact of cement and concrete. More importantly, limestone calcined clay cement shows considerable promise in terms of reduction in CO 2 emissions and energy demand in both cement and concrete, with more improvement in higher grade concrete. © 2019, RILEM.