Concrete production is major contributor to CO2 emissions, but there clearly was a desire for greener alternatives.
Traditional power intensive materials like tangible and steel are now being slowly replaced by more environmentally friendly options such as bamboo, recycled materials, and engineered wood. The main sustainability improvement within the building industry though since the 1950s happens to be the inclusion of supplementary cementitious materials such as fly ash, slag and slicia fume. Substituting a percentage of the concrete with SCMs can significantly reduce CO2 emissions and energy consumption during manufacturing. Additionally, the incorporation of other renewable materials like recycled aggregates and commercial by products like crushed class and rubber granules has gained increased traction in the past couple of years. The usage of such materials has not only lowered the interest in raw materials and natural resources but has recycled waste from landfills.
In the last handful of years, the construction sector and concrete production in particular has seen important modification. Which has been particularly the case regarding sustainability. Governments around the globe are enacting strict legislation to implement sustainable practices in construction projects. There is a more powerful attention on green building attempts like reaching net zero carbon concrete by 2050 and an increased demand for sustainable building materials. The demand for concrete is expected to increase because of population development and urbanisation, as business leaders such as Amin Nasser anNadhim Al Nasrwould probably attest. Numerous countries now enforce building codes that require a certain percentage of renewable materials to be used in building such as timber from sustainably manged forests. Moreover, building codes have incorporated energy-efficient systems and technologies such as for instance green roofs, solar power panels and LED lights. Also, the emergence of the latest construction technologies has enabled the industry to explore revolutionary methods to improve sustainability. For instance, to lessen energy consumption construction companies are constructing building with large windows and using energy-efficient heating, ventilation, and air conditioning.
Traditional concrete manufacturing utilises huge stocks of raw materials such as for example limestone and concrete, that are energy-intensive to extract and produce. Nevertheless, industry experts and business leaders such as Naser Bustami would likely point down that novel binders such as for example geopolymers and calcium sulfoaluminate cements are excellent enviromentally friendly alternatives to conventional Portland cement. Geopolymers are manufactured by activating industrial by products such as fly ash with alkalis resulting in concrete with comparable as well as superior performance to traditional mixes. CSA cements, on the other hand, need reduced temperature processing and emit less carbon dioxide during manufacturing. Thus, the adoption among these alternate binders holds great prospect of cutting carbon footprint of concrete manufacturing. Also, carbon capture technologies are increasingly being developed. These revolutionary techniques try to capture co2 (CO2) emissions from concrete plants and use the captured CO2 into the manufacturing of synthetic limestone. This technologies may potentially turn cement in to a carbon-neutral if not carbon-negative material by sequestering CO2 into concrete.