Low Carbon Solutions for Industry and Construction

There are already a few viable low carbon concrete and steel production measures and technologies to lower the carbon footprint of production processes for traditional building construction. Additionally, there are two emerging low carbon technologies. Here are a few readily available measures, and also the two emerging technologies, for low carbon concrete and steel>>>

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  The use of recycled building materials. By using recycled concrete and steel the carbon footprint of construction can be greatly reduced. This low carbon construction strategy has been around for a while. The London Summer Olympics represented an exemplary effort to create vast areas of buildings with low carbon footprints, in part by using the strategy of using recycled building materials.

• Substituting the clinker used in concrete production with industrial by-product materials like blast furnace slag and fly ash. Clinker substitutes can lower the carbon footprint of cement production and avoid the carbon emissions generated in the chemical reaction of converting limestone to clinker. [See this link for a list of more clinker substitutes].

• The use of carbon capture with cement production is an emerging low carbon construction strategy. Among many ideas to lower the carbon footprint of concrete production is capturing and using the CO2 released in the production process as a binding element in the concrete production process itself (as seen with the start-up company CarbonCure).

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  The use of electric arc furnaces (EAF) to produce low carbon steel. This production technique for steel can lower carbon emissions from steel by up to 87%. EAFs use electricity for power, often use steel scrap and other recycled steels, and are also more efficient than conventional blast furnaces.

• In the future, the emerging technology of clean hydrogen promises to lower the carbon footprint of steel even further, if EAFs successfully evolve to be fueled by low carbon hydrogen. Another strategy for producing low carbon steel is to combine steel production with carbon capture, which, like hydrogen, is an emerging clean energy technology.

• In the future, clean hydrogen might be able to be used to fuel the low carbon concrete production process. However, the above low carbon strategies will still be needed to manage the CO2 emissions generated through the actual chemical reactions in the cement production process.

The low carbon construction techniques listed above are growing in use worldwide. For example, recycled concrete is used in over 30% of construction projects globally. The use of electric arc furnaces has grown to over a quarter of global steel production. The use of carbon capture and/ or hydrogen in steel and cement production are still technologies that need further research, development, and deployment (RD&D) to become commercially viable. Read more about capturing the carbon created in the concrete and steel production processes, and getting power for the production processes from hydrogen (as well as other low carbon production strategies), here>>> 

Going net zero for cement and steel - Nature

Here are a few examples of companies using innovative technologies to produce cement and steel with reduced emissions: