Discover how everyday building materials could be the key to massive carbon storage, according to a new study.
Technologies like biochar in concrete and biomass-based plastics could turn buildings into carbon sinks, driving forward both economic and environmental progress.
Carbon Storage in Construction Materials
Construction materials like concrete and plastic could play a significant role in storing billions of tons of carbon dioxide, according to a recent study by researchers from the University of California, Davis, and Stanford University. Published today (January 9) in the journal Science, the study highlights how incorporating CO2 storage into buildings, alongside efforts to decarbonize the economy, could help achieve global greenhouse gas reduction targets.
“The potential is pretty large,” said Elisabeth Van Roijen, the study’s lead author and a former graduate student at UC Davis.
Rethinking Carbon Sequestration
Carbon sequestration involves capturing carbon dioxide — either directly from its source or from the atmosphere — stabilizing it, and storing it in a way that prevents it from contributing to climate change. Traditional methods include injecting CO2 underground or storing it in the deep ocean, but these options come with technical hurdles and environmental risks.
“What if, instead, we can leverage materials that we already produce in large quantities to store carbon?” Van Roijen said.
Exploring Carbon Capture in Building Materials
Working with Sabbie Miller, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Davis, and Steve Davis at Stanford University, Van Roijen calculated the potential to store carbon in a wide range of common building materials including concrete (cement and aggregates), asphalt, plastics, wood and brick.
More than 30 billion tons of conventional versions of these materials are produced worldwide every year.
Concrete’s Gigaton Potential
The carbon-storing approaches studied included adding biochar (made by heating waste biomass) into concrete; using artificial rocks that can be loaded with carbon as concrete and asphalt pavement aggregate; plastics and asphalt binders based on biomass rather than fossil petroleum sources; and including biomass fiber into bricks. These technologies are at different stages of readiness, with some still being investigated at a lab or pilot scale and others already available for adoption.
Researchers found that while bio-based plastics could take up the largest amount of carbon by weight, by far the largest potential for carbon storage is in using carbonated aggregates to make concrete. That’s because concrete is by far the world’s most popular building material: Over 20 billion tons are produced every year.
“If feasible, a little bit of storage in concrete could go a long way,” Miller said. The team calculated that if 10% of the world’s concrete aggregate production were carbonateable, it could absorb a gigaton of CO2.
Bio-Based Innovations and Circular Economies
The feedstocks for these new processes for making building materials are mostly low-value waste materials such as biomass, Van Roijen said. Implementing these new processes would enhance their value, creating economic development and promoting a circular economy, she said.
Some technology development is needed, particularly in cases where material performance and net-storage potential of individual manufacturing methods must be validated. However, many of these technologies are just waiting to be adopted, Miller said.
Reference: “Building materials could store more than 15 billion tons of CO2 annually” 9 January 2024, Science.
DOI: 10.1126/science.adq8594
Reference: “Building materials could store more than 16 billion tonnes of CO2 annually” by Elisabeth Van Roijen, Sabbie A. Miller and Steven J. Davis, 9 January 2025, Science.
DOI: 10.1126/science.adq8594
Van Roijen is now a researcher at the U.S. Department of Energy National Renewable Energy Laboratory. The work was supported by Miller’s CAREER grant from the National Science Foundation.
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