A New Look, at an Old Friend – How Concrete Will Reshape Our Future

Seattle, Washington, June 17, 2021 – Participants in the second Pathway to Resilience and Carbon Neutrality webinar series that took place this week received new insights on the most widely used and most sustainable building material in the world – concrete.

Tien Peng, Senior Vice President of Sustainability, Codes, and Standards for the National Ready Mixed Concrete Association, demonstrated how concrete, the material that has been the basis of civilization for centuries, is now a leading innovation to help reduce the built environment’s carbon footprint.

As an architect and mechanical engineer and drawing on his knowledge as a reviewer for the International Code Council’s National Institute of Standards and Technology, he explained why concrete is strong, resilient, non-combustible, energy-saving, and affordable is the clear leader in sustainable construction.

He demonstrated how, by its very design, shape, color, and use, concrete could materially lower a building’s or a community’s energy costs while providing safe, affordable, and livable homes, schools, hospitals, and public places.

Tien explained how most of the carbon emissions associated with concrete occur during the manufacturing of cement. This substance binds aggregate and steel to make the concrete that allows us to build bridges, roads, skyscrapers, and homes.

He noted that while policymakers are looking closely at the initial embodied carbon of building materials to lower the carbon footprint of our cities and towns, the accurate measurement of the carbon footprint of a building is what happens over its lifespan and beyond.

“Full lifecycle carbon accounting from the cradle to the grave shows why concrete is the key to our low carbon future”, he said.

Tien outlined how carbon dioxide captured from other industrial processes can be injected into the freshly mixed concrete. It remains stable and adds strength and durability without any loss of performance.

Breakthrough technologies have enabled optimization in each phase of construction from design through to scheduling, materials handling, construction, lifetime use, and end-of-life demolition and reuse.

He noted several significant innovations in capturing carbon dioxide and other wastes from industrial processes and turning them into high-tech solutions to combat climate change.

More importantly, he stated, “concrete reabsorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere,” which means the built environment is a massive carbon sink, rivaling the natural environment – our forests and grasslands – as an effective way to keep greenhouse gas emissions out of the atmosphere.

“When concrete is recycled after a building is demolished, it absorbs even more carbon dioxide before it is used in new structures,” he observed.

Drawing upon his experience as a leader promoting deep green practices and social responsibility to various industries from builders to manufacturers to NGOs, he showed how concrete could be a leader in decarbonizing our economies.

“What we design and what we build can make all the difference to our future,” noted Tien, and unlike most building materials, the accurate measure of concrete’s carbon footprint comes from its lifetime use.

The energy it saves, the safety it provides against climate extremes, and the lives it protects because it does not burn or rot when floods and storms occur make concrete the clear winner for sustainable construction.

That is why the concrete sector supports policy measures such as the recently passed legislation passed in New York that promotes low carbon concrete in major public facilities.

“The future is ours to shape,” noted William Larson, Chair of the Building Resilience Coalition, a co-sponsor of the Pathway to Resilience and Carbon Neutrality webinar series, who moderated the webinar.

This week’s webinar was the second of four events developed by the Pacific Northwest Building Resilience Coalition in partnership with the Pacific Northwest Economic Region. He urged participants to take part in the following two events in the series.

On June 22, 10:00 AM PDT Professor Randolph Kirchain, Co-Director of the Concrete Sustainability Hub at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology will address the carbon footprint of the concrete industry and how achieving our global sustainable development goals depends on the expansion of infrastructure and housing that depends upon concrete.

On June 29, 10:00 AM PST, Evan Reis, co-founder of the U.S. Resiliency Council, will address the Resilience Advantage. He will explore the economic and environmental benefits of disaster-resilient design and why concrete is essential in safeguarding our cities and towns from the often devastating impacts of extreme weather and climate change.

More information on the webinar series is available on the Building Resilience Coalition website here.

You can register for the series here: bit.ly/resiliencepathway

For more information, contact us at info@buildingresiliencecoalition.org