UK Concrete commitment to decarbonising

16 Jun 2020

Decarbonising concrete has been a focus of the industry for 30 years. It has been reporting on its efforts since the Kyoto protocol in 1990, which is why 1990 is the benchmark for the carbon indicators in the Concrete Industry Sustainable Construction Strategy. First launched in 2008, this represented a commitment from 10 different sub-sectors to work to an agreed performance framework. The latest report, the 12th, is based on performance data from 2008 to 2018 and the headline statistic is that the embodied carbon of a standardised mix of concrete is now 72kg per tonne, a reduction of 29.7% from the 1990 baseline. 

The original strategy set a range of targets for 2012, which were subsequently updated with new ones for 2020. As we reach that milestone, the concrete industry will set out a revised strategy for beyond 2020, with the aim of achieving net-zero carbon. An important milestone in this journey is the framework for how the concrete and cement industry will deliver beyond net zero. 

Yesterday, 15 June, MPA UK Concrete, the group representing the UK concrete industry, published their framework to help inform the delivery of an ambitious roadmap for the UK concrete and cement sector to deliver net negative emissions by 2050. In preparing the roadmap, UK Concrete is exploring the use of existing and emerging technologies including energy efficiency, fuel switching, low-carbon cements and concretes, and Carbon Capture, Usage or Storage (CCUS) to deliver the UK Government’s net zero target. 

To go beyond net zero and deliver net negative, removing more carbon from the atmosphere than the industry emits each year, the emerging model will use the natural properties of concrete including carbonation and thermal mass. 

Read the article - No Offsets Required - originally published in Concrete Futures: Remixed.

  Download - Beyond Net Zero, UK Concrete