Turning CO2 in to Carbonaide

Welcome to the Strawman, this is the daily climate newsletter that delivers like a mailman - every morning with a smile!

Remember last week when we were talking about the IPCC report? Quick refresher, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), published the final part of its sixth assessment report and they dropped the heat - no pun intended. They’re sounding the alarm and they’re telling us we’ve messed up and need to act now. Sounds like I’m back at straw school 😔.

When looking at improving the emissions coming from infrastructure, improved construction material is overwhelmingly impactful. In fact, according to IPCC research, it’s 50% more impactful at reducing emissions than fuel efficient vehicles and electric vehicles - maybe Elon needs to start making bricks…

What’s wrong with how we build today?

Well concrete is a pretty wild thing and we make over 10 billion cubic meters every year. Each ton of cement creates somewhere from 800 to 900 KGs of emissions. In other words, up to 8% of all global emissions come from humans making concrete. The impact of alternative building materials could be potentially massive.

How do we take on concrete?

Well concrete has cemented (badum tss!) it’s place at the top as an all round great building material. It’s strong, versatile, and relatively affordable - all traits that it shares with the Strawman 😉.

Replacing concrete outright isn’t an easy task but that’s not the only way we can reduce the emissions impact - a number of startups are working on alternatives. One example is Carbonaide which binds CO2 into precast concrete by using increased pressure. In this process, less concrete is used for the same volume, and this concrete has less CO2 in it. In this process, they can halve the emissions impact of cement concrete.

Now they’re even working on repurposing the waste products, such as industry slag and bio-ash, into useful materials. If they can pull this off, they can turn their process in to one with a negative carbon footprint.

The thing is, these processes are expensive, unproven, and so far operate on relatively small scales. Carbonaide says they can make the unit economics make sense, but they admit it will take some behaviour change to drive mass adoption but they back themselves to make the change. As they say, when life gives you carbon, you gotta make Carbonaide.

That's all for today's edition of The Strawman! If you enjoyed our foray in to the world of concrete don’t forget to give it a share. In the least creepy way possible, we’re watching you.