Study: carbon capture slashes concrete's climate impact

Hilde Wexels Riser

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The researchers used the recently constructed Vollsveien 9-11 office building in Bærum as a case study, given its extensive use of concrete and lower-carbon concrete mixes like ultra-low and low-carbon concrete types.

They modeled replacing the project’s concrete with mixes made from cement produced using three different CCS technology scenarios – CEM STD-FA Grey, EvoBuild, and EvoZero. Environmental impacts were then compared at the whole-building level and for just the concrete elements.

Cutting Emissions Significantly

For the whole building, using the CEM STD-FA Grey CCS cement resulted in a 3.3% increase in embodied carbon versus the original low-carbon design. However, EvoBuild cement reduced emissions by 3.6%, while the EvoZero scenario achieved a 12.1% cut.

When compared to an industry reference concrete, the building’s total embodied carbon was 13.9% higher than the original low-carbon design.

Focusing just on the concrete elements, the CEM STD-FA Grey CCS cement hiked embodied emissions 17.4% over the original low-carbon mixes. But EvoBuild and EvoZero cements slashed concrete’s embodied carbon by 19.8% and 63.1% respectively.

“These findings highlight the potential for carbon capture and storage to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from construction projects, especially when using EvoBuild and EvoZero cement types,” stated SINTEF researcher Arian Loli. “The results can also help update environmental product declaration frameworks and standardize the benefits of CCS technology.”

As the push to reduce embodied carbon accelerates, the FME ZEN study reinforces carbon capture’s potential to transform cement and concrete into significantly greener building materials.

The translation was written by an AI system, though the original text was authored by a human. Read the original article here