1
Variations on a Theme
—LETTER from the EDITOR—
Frank Cavaliere, Managing Editor-“Concrete InFocus” | E-mail: fcavaliere@nrmca.org
The cover story of the Summer 2022 Issue of Concrete InFocus Magazine titled “What You Can Do Right Now: The Top 10 Ways to Reduce Concrete’s Carbon Footprint“, is a prime example of how the concrete paving and building industry is helping to shape future ready mixed concrete production.
Dedicated readers of “Concrete InFocus“, and National Ready Mixed Concrete Association (NRMCA) communication efforts, have seen these words in articles, news releases, E-News items & more:
• sustainability • carbon neutral • reduced carbon footprint •
There is much more to come! Why? Because NRMCA and its members are committed to adapting the world’s best paving and building material to a changing world—meaning making ready mixed concrete take its rightful place as a solution to the world’s environmental challenges!!
To read entire EDITOR’s LETTER, along with this Summer 2022 issue of this magazine, please go to: www.concreteinfocus-digital.com/nrcq/0222_summer_2022/MobilePagedArticle.action?articleId=1792462#articleId1792462
2
Innovation Is Key to Zero Carbon Concrete:
NRMCA Develops New Programs to Encourage Innovative Technologies
—BUILD WITH STRENGTH—
Lionel Lemay, Executive Vice President, Structures and Sustainability | E-mail: llemay@nrmca.org
2009
NRMCA members started the journey toward carbon neutrality by adopting a “carbon reduction goal of 30% by 2030”… among other impacts such as energy use, water use and waste along with increased recycled content. [Although this section mostly pertains to buildings/structures—vast portion of our ENTIRE INFRASTRUCTURE—the developments, theories and technology may all be applied to concrete pavements!]
2012
NRMCA members subsequently committed to more aggressive carbon reduction goals by adopting the “Architecture 2030 Challenge for Products” which stated a goal of 50% carbon footprint reduction by 2030; and embodied carbon neutrality by 2050. They urged product manufactures to use “Life Cycle Assessment and Environmental Product Declarations-or EPDs-as the methodology for measuring progress.
2014
• EPD Program launched
• Benchmarks for carbon footprint published
• Demonstrated a 21% decrease in carbon footprint
2016
NRMCA launched the “Build With Strength” and “Pave Ahead” initiatives to reach the design-build community to communicate, advocate, educate and promote concrete sustainability through transparency, innovation and measurement in support of our carbon reduction goals.
2021
NRMCA reaffirmed its commitment to carbon neutrality when it joined the Portland Cement Association (PCA) in developing a “2050 Roadmap to Carbon Neutrality”
2022 • April 1
NRMCA, in partnership with Build With Strength and Pave Ahead, launched a new education and award program! The Concrete Innovations Learning Center is designed to bring practitioners, researchers and policy makers together to exchange the latest innovations for sustainable concrete design, construction and manufacturing. Online learning sessions are scheduled monthly, featuring the latest innovations in concrete technology. For details visit www.concreteinnovations.com
The Concrete Innovations Award Program recognizes outstanding achievement in concrete manufacturing, design and construction.
“Concrete Innovations Award Program”
People, companies, products, projects
that demonstrate outstanding performance in
concrete manufacturing, research, design, construction
to help improve concrete performance, while lowering environmental impacts,
including embodied & operational carbon footprint.
Nominations DUE December 31
Winners will be announced at an early 2023 Ceremony
For all details, please go to: www.concreteinnovations.com/awards.
Click to enlarge: The Pantheon PHOTO: HERCULES MILAS/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
The Romans mastered the use of concrete 2,000 years ago to build some of the world’s most iconic structures, including the Pantheon—one of the oldest buildings still in use today. Although different than today’s concrete, Roman concrete used the same principals: combining aggregate—pieces of rock, ceramic tile, & brick rubble (often recycled from demolished buildings)—with a hydraulic binder—favored Volcanic ash called pozzolana, gypsum, & quicklime. The Pantheon was built using materials with relatively low environmental impacts that has lasted for two millennia, an incredible innovation considering the limited technology available to the Romans!
Achieving carbon neutrality will be challenging:
• Adopting new technologies and innovations will be the key to achieving goals
• NRMCA members are responsible for manufacturing the product that is used in nearly every structure where people live, work, learn and play
• It’s used for the tallest buildings, the longest bridges, the largest buildings, the busiest airports, the most efficient rapid transit systems, roadways, theaters, stadiums, schools, apartment buildings and homes
• Drinking water is transported in concrete pipes and reservoirs, and waste is treated in wastewater treatment plants made of concrete
• It is part of the infrastructure that connects us
• It’s the material that helped build modern society
• It will be part of improving modern society in the future
• The challenge?? To offer all the benefits of concrete at lower carbon footprint …
• Today, most concrete is made with manufactured products such as Portland Cement, combined with high quality quarried aggregate and other innovative materials to meet the rigorous demand for performance and economy
• Innovative supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs) such as fly ash, slag cement, silica fume and natural pozzolans are used to increase strength, durability and workability
• Innovative cements, including portland limestone cement (PLC), enhance concrete performance while extending cement supplies
• Chemical admixtures affect cement efficiency, set time, freeze-thaw resistance and flowability
• Fibers are added to increase ductility and control cracking
• Carbon dioxide is injected into concrete to improve strength and capture greenhouse gasses
• Some enhancements actually scrub pollutants from the surface of concrete and from the surrounding atmosphere which is what makes the concrete on the Jubilee Church in Rome so innovative
• The exterior curved surfaces are coated with titanium dioxide (TiO2) cement which eats smog, helping to keep the surface clean
Both Build With Strength and Pave Ahead interface with decision makers to promote concrete as the material of choice for buildings and pavements. Both promotion teams can provide design teams and developers with the necessary technical information they need to design their projects to be resilient, durable, energy efficient and cost effective. Recently, the design teams have developed the capabilities to offer solutions for low carbon concrete. Concrete is being used more than ever before for building and pavement applications; however, influential owners and design firms want those benefits at lower carbon footprint through life cycle assessment and specification reviews.
The Concrete Design Center now has the capability to offer guide specifications for low carbon concrete and conduct whole-building life cycle assessments as a way to demonstrate strategies for low-carbon projects. To leverage these resources, please visit: www.buildwithstrength.com/design-center or www.paveahead.com/register.
There is no magic bullet to make concrete with zero carbon footprint. It can be done, but not at the volume and cost demanded by today’s building owners. For some concretes on a project, the carbon reduction might be 90%, 70%, and 30%. All these reductions lead to concrete with a significantly lower footprint than most concrete projects. Through these new programs and capabilities offered by NRMCA, and great work being done by NRMCA members, the NRMCA’s goal of carbon neutrality by 2050 will be achieved! To read entire perspective, please go to: https://www.concreteinfocus-digital.com/nrcq/0222_summer_2022/MobilePagedArticle.action?articleId=1792463#articleId1792463
3
Switching from Prescriptive to Performance-based Standards
& Designing with the End Goal in Mind
—CEMENT SIDE (column in Concrete InFocus)—
Mike Ireland, President & CEO-Portland Cement Association | E-mail: mireland@cement.org
As Washington and Oregon prepare to replace the I-5 bridge that links the two states over the Columbia River, a new benchmark has emerged as a crucial priority. The Interstate Bridge Replacement Program is one of the first major infrastructure projects in the country to factor equality into the construction process, with a stated aim to both increase bridge accessibility for nearby communities of color, and to discontinue harm to these communities at the same time.
As infrastructure is built and repaired under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), traditional standards of safety, reliability and utility will be standard protocol. These considerations will increasingly become key benchmarks for project success:
• Wider urban expansion
• Equity
• ‘Low-carbon’
• Sustainability
As we consider how to reduce the carbon footprint of construction, we need to shift our thinking and look at opportunities across the entire cement-concrete-construction value chain. This means:
• Optimizing both the materials as well as the processes
• Viewing a project across its entire life cycle
• What it will be built with
• Importantly—what it will be used for
• Will have to shift from a prescriptive approach to performance-based standards
Taking a prescriptive approach has promoted industry inertia over industry innovation in the United States. Low-carbon cement and concrete materials have been available for some time:
• Portland Limestone Cement (PLC)
—can reduce cement’s CO2 emissions by 10%
—widely used in Europe for decades
—availability and markets have been limited by overly restrictive or arbitrarily prescriptive procurement policies in both the public and private sectors
—by transitioning to performance-based material and design standards, policymakers can increase the market for currently available high-performance, lower carbon products like PLC and other supplementary cementitious materials and admixtures.
We are encouraged to see examples of this collaboration across the value chain:
Chicago new 41-story, 440-unit condominium complex “The Reed“:
—provides a positive example of how this can be done
—had specifications for the concrete which matched the company’s sustainability aims and goals to be net-zero carbon by 2025 and zero carbon – without offsets – by 2040
Ensured it had a concrete product that met these goals:
—the developers tasked a concrete company with creating a blend that had a far smaller carbon footprint
—after testing, the resulting proprietary concrete mix used materials such as fly ash and slag that would otherwise have ended up in landfills, creating a longer lasting and denser mix that was also far less energy intensive to produce
—benefits to this approach continue to stack up long after the concrete was poured as the denser mix also has a lighter color that allows the temperature inside the building to remain more stable – improving HVAC efficiency as a result
In a time where shifting our approach is becoming critical:
—United States expected to build the equivalent of New York City 20 times over between 2017 and 2050
—passage of the IIJA will only increase this level of construction
—we must also factor in sustainability and other concerns across the entire cement-concrete-construction value chain
—will take collaboration across the entire value chain
—will take adjustments from policymakers and regulators
In the industry’s Roadmap to Carbon Neutrality, the Portland Cement Association (PCA) outlines a pathway for the entire value chain to reach carbon neutrality by 2050. The cement industry has been reducing its CO2 emissions since the 1990s, and Environmental Protection Agency data now shows that the industry is responsible for just 1.25% of U.S. CO2 emissions, but we cannot rest on that when carbon neutrality is the goal that companies and industries across multiple sectors are aiming for.
Among the recommendations PCA makes in the Roadmap, shifting to performance-based standards is one of the most prominent. If this and other recommendations are put into practice, the entire value chain can find itself in the advantageous position of reducing CO2 emissions even as demand increases.
These days, concrete and cement are increasingly home to a rich seam of innovation, turning concrete into a space-age material that can provide a resilient, sustainable solution to our nation’s construction needs. However, ensuring these new blends move from the margins to the mainstream will require a shift away from today’s institutional inertia brought on by restrictive or prescriptive procurement policies. To read entire perspective, please go to: https://www.concreteinfocus-digital.com/nrcq/0222_summer_2022/MobilePagedArticle.action?articleId=1792464#articleId1792464
4
Environmental Audits from Your Customers? Is that Possible?
—ENVIROSCENE—
Douglas Ruhlin, Environmental & Sustainability Consultant
We talk a lot about the value of conducting environmental audits of concrete plant facilities and as environmental consultants we do a lot of third-party environmental audits for concrete companies and others. After all, it’s a great way (maybe the best way) to find out where you stand – usually relative to governmental environmental regulatory requirements and standards – and to identify any deficiencies like areas of non-compliance and derive corrective action plans before they become violations! We’ve been preaching environmental audits for years and many within the concrete industry know the value of this exercise, particularly when done on a regular basis such as every few years.In fact, we encourage concrete customers to take it one step further. As part of your “environmental portfolio” why not discuss things you do beyond regulatory compliance? How about that landscaping project, your use of recycled water and aggregate, your reductions in carbon footprint, your EPDs, your energy savings, your community outreach programs, along with everything else you do? It’s all good and it’s all fair game for your environmental portfolio. Rather than fumbling for records – or worse, being called out for not having some permit or filing – why not get together a package that wows prospective customers ready for them as soon as they arrive? Or better yet, how about using your portfolio proactively to demonstrate that your plant and company are already ahead of the game and the logical choice for that project you’re anxious to win?
To read entire perspective, please go to: https://www.concreteinfocus-digital.com/nrcq/0222_summer_2022/MobilePagedArticle.action?articleId=1792466#articleId1792466
5
Pave Ahead – Sustainably!
—PAVE AHEAD—
Phil Kresge, Senior Vice President-Local Paving | E-mail: pkresge@nrmca.org
The Pave Ahead team recently returned from the NAIOP Commercial Real Estate Development Association’s I.CON industrial real estate conferences in Las Vegas and two things are evident:
ONE – sustainability is a driving factor in commercial development
TWO – no one thinks about pavement when they think about sustainability
Sustainability dominated the list of topics at both I.CON conferences and with good reason. Retail giant Amazon has committed to net-zero emissions by 2040. In announcing Amazon’s Climate Pledge, Jeff Bezos stated, “We’re done being in the middle of the herd on this issue. We’ve decided to use our size and scale to make a difference.” Commitments to sustainability through the pledge include measuring and reporting greenhouse gas emissions, implementing decarbonization strategies through business change and innovations, and neutralizing remaining emissions with quantifiable, real, permanent offsets.
Since its inception in 2019, over 300 companies have signed on to the pledge. Among the pledge signatories is CBRE – the world’s largest manager of commercial properties. Other major retailers, including Wal-Mart and Ikea, have made similar commitments. As recently as a few short years ago, even I didn’t talk about sustainability and pavement in the same sentence. As a “pavement guy,” to me sustainability was something for architects and environmentalists to discuss, particularly with regard to building design and performance. When it came to pavement, only 3 things mattered: price, price and price!
Now, as we look at the growing need for new warehouse space – 1.5 billion square feet by 2025 – we have the opportunity to highlight the benefits of concrete pavement and the important role it can play in the overall sustainable design of any project.
Take Sustainability to the Curb!
Now before you call the sustainability police, let me clarify. I did not say “KICK sustainability to the curb,” I said, “TAKE sustainability to the curb.”
In simplest terms, the goal of sustainable design is to minimize the impact that development has on the environment by reducing the consumption and waste of natural resources while increasing the resilience of the finished structures. Historically, most of the focus has been on making the building meet specific sustainability standards, many times at a higher price. All too often, designers miss an enormous opportunity to increase a project’s sustainability – the pavement. Developers will spend thousands of dollars to make the building green, but will leave the sustainability at the front door, rather than carrying it all the way out to the curb. It is our responsibility to educate them that the project’s pavement has a significant impact on its overall sustainability and concrete pavement can soften that impact.
Turn Your Heat Sink into a Carbon Sink
Concrete is a carbon sink. Through a natural process called carbonation, also known as “carbon-uptake,” in-place concrete pavement absorbs CO2 from the atmosphere and permanently sequesters it. The amount of CO2 sequestered depends upon the surface area of concrete that is exposed to the atmosphere and the length of exposure. What easier, better way is there to maximize the carbon sink than to replace the dark, heat absorbing asphalt pavement with concrete? A study by MIT found that concrete pavement’s carbonation can offset 5% of the CO2 emissions generated during the manufacture of the cement used in the pavement.
Reduce Embodied Carbon
Embodied carbon—the amount of carbon emitted during the construction of a building—currently accounts for over 10% of greenhouse gas emissions. One of the best methods to reduce embodied carbon is to use resilient building materials that last longer and reduce maintenance operations. With its extensive service life, concrete pavement eliminates the constant maintenance, the additional CO2 emissions and other toxins associated with resurfacing and reconstruction operations required of other pavements, making it both financially and environmentally friendly. No other paving material matches concrete’s ability to withstand heavy day-to-day traffic and extreme weather while providing 40 or more years of service.
New carbon sequestration technology introduces recycled CO2 into fresh concrete where it undergoes a mineralization process and becomes permanently embedded. Other advancements in concrete mixtures incorporate materials such as Portland limestone cement (PLC), supplementary cementitious materials (SCM) and recycled materials which help reduce concrete’s carbon footprint by as much as 25%.
“No other paving material matches concrete’s ability to withstand heavy day-to-day traffic and extreme weather while providing 40 or more years of service.
Save Energy
Concrete’s natural lighter color absorbs less heat, minimizing heat island effect by lowering ambient air temperature by as much as 7 to 10 degrees. Additionally, concrete’s higher reflectivity allows for more efficient lighting while maintaining a bright, safe nighttime environment. Studies show that with a concrete pavement, recommended luminance levels can be achieved using one third fewer light fixtures or with significant reduction in luminaire wattage. The light-colored concrete surface pairs perfectly with LED and other high efficiency lights.
NRMCA – A Sustainability Steward
The concrete industry has taken on a stewardship role, leading the construction materials community with our sustainability efforts. NRMCA, in partnership with the Portland Cement Association, is committed to achieving carbon neutrality by 2050. The NRMCA has continually been on the leading edge, developing tools and support materials for the industry.
There are several excellent resources available under the Concrete Pavement Sustainability and Resilience tab at paveahead.com/resources. Included are links to the Concrete Sustainability Hub at MIT as well as the sustainability pages at nrmca.org. You’ll also find our newest pavement sustainability infographic. And of course, you can always call on the experts at Pave Ahead. To read entire perspective, please go to: https://www.concreteinfocus-digital.com/nrcq/0222_summer_2022/MobilePagedArticle.action?articleId=1792468#articleId1792468
6
What You Can Do Right Now The Top 10 Ways to Reduce Concrete’s Carbon Footprint
—INNOVATIONS IN BUILDINGS—
By Lionel Lemay, Executive Vice President, Structures and Sustainability
E-mail: llemay@nrmca.org
Brandon Wray, Director, Building Innovations at National Ready Mixed Concrete Association
E-mail: BWray@nrmca.org
Lionel Lemay, Author: “Build With Strength Column” titled “Innovation Is Key to Zero Carbon Concrete; NRMCA Develops New Programs to Encourage Innovative Technologies”. He takes readers through a timeline that began in 2009 when NRMCA members began to strive toward carbon neutrality.
PHOTO: CASEY DUNN
NRMCA adopted the Architecture 2030 Challenge for Products in 2012, which has a goal of 50% carbon footprint reduction of building products by 2030 and embodied carbon neutrality by 2050. NRMCA re-affirmed its commitment to carbon neutrality when it joined the Portland Cement Association (PCA) in developing a 2050 Roadmap to Carbon Neutrality in 2021. The key to achieving carbon neutrality will be to encourage innovation and engage the design build community to specify and design concrete to permit optimum performance while achieving low embodied carbon concrete.
The following is a list of strategies NRMCA promotes to the design build community for reducing concrete’s carbon footprint, broadly in order of priority, but not in order of impact reduction. All are important and should be implemented and THINGS YOU CAN DO RIGHT NOW!:
- Communicate carbon reduction goals
- Ensure good quality control and assurance
- Optimize concrete design
- Specify innovative cements
- Specify supplementary cementitious materials
- Specify admixtures
- Don’t limit ingredients
- Set targets for carbon footprint
- Sequester carbon dioxide in concrete
- Encourage innovation
This article provides details of each strategy and recommended changes to specifications to help achieve lower carbon concrete, along with concrete pavements, much of this article discusses concrete structures … What Are the Impacts and Why Is It Important?
For all information, much more detail, carbon reduction goals, recommendations, specifications, etc., please go to: https://www.concreteinfocus-digital.com/nrcq/0222_summer_2022/MobilePagedArticle.action?articleId=1792470#articleId1792470