Research Aims to Limit Barriers to Low-Carbon Concrete

Brief 

Bailey Sparkes offers a look at global efforts to make concrete more sustainable, including Aalto University’s research to overcome the initial strength challenges of concrete containing blast furnace ash. Sparkes also explores produce rechargeable cementitious batteries and novel techniques to reduce waste in the production of precast concrete.

Insight

Nothing less than the future of the concrete industry – and the world’s climate – is at stake in a research project trying to devise ways to make low-carbon concrete viable.

Ten trillion cubic metres of concrete are made every year. This means that a lot of climate-warming carbon dioxide is emitted into the atmosphere using standard cement, which equates to 8 per cent of the world’s total CO2 emissions.

To accommodate a growing population and its associated demands, the global construction industry plans to add 2.48 trillion square feet (230 billion m2) of new floor area to the global building stock, effectively doubling global building stock by as early as 2060.

This is the equivalent of adding an area the size of Paris to the planet’s building stock, every week. New building stock must be designed to meet net-zero-carbon standards, as explained by Lara Shear from The Planet Mark.

So why doesn’t the construction industry simply shift to low-carbon concrete? It’s been around for years and could reduce concrete-related carbon dioxide emissions by a fantastic 50 per cent. One of the most straightforward ways to reduce emissions from concrete production is to produce cement with blast furnace ash or fly ash. Unfortunately, it’s not quite the like-for-like swap it sounds.

“It is important to convince the concrete industry that investing in low carbon is worthwhile. We aim to ensure that the results of the project can be widely used by companies in concrete production and construction. Only in this way can climate emissions be reduced.”