As we’ve noted previously on this blog, climate action in the building industry had been focused, appropriately, on reducing the operational carbon of our buildings through efficiency and renewable energy. However, science and recent number-crunching indicates we must shift more attention to reducing the embodied carbon of our buildings as well. That’s the carbon emissions related to extracting, producing, and transporting building materials, and the biggest contributor is concrete.
That doesn’t mean we can, or even would want to, eliminate concrete, but we can be more strategic to lower the carbon emissions.