What Build Back Better Can (and Can’t) do to Fix the CO2 Beneath Our Feet
What Build Back Better Can (and Can’t) do to Fix the CO2 Beneath Our Feet
By Alex Mitchell
What Build Back Better Can (and Can’t) do to Fix the CO2 Beneath Our Feet
By Alex Mitchell
As we wrap up this week, US President Biden’s Build Back Better and Infrastructure bills continue to slowly move their way through Congress. Included in the current version of Build Back Better is $100 million for the EPA to create clearer standards for “low-embodied carbon construction materials and products used for transportation projects”, as well as $900 million for the Federal Highway Administration “to reimburse the cost difference between low-embodied carbon construction materials and traditional materials in highway construction projects.” That’s at least $1 billion, without even diving into the $110 billion in the Infrastructure bill for roads, bridges and major infrastructure. As we inch closer to the passage of both bills, it’s worth taking a step back to see what these bills can accomplish and what else will remain to be done to reduce the carbon impact of the concrete we drive and walk on.
First, a bit of a background on roads. In less carbon intensive days, our ancestors traveled down dirt roads and, later, cobblestones, gravel or wood. But today, of the 64 million kilometers of roadway in the world, 25 million are paved, either with asphalt or concrete. Both asphalt and concrete began to be applied to roads in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, but their use exploded with the rise of the passenger car. Of the two materials, concrete is generally used for more heavily traveled roads, as its higher cost is more than offset by its significantly longer lifespan.
As a material, concrete is basically a mix of sand, rocks, and other elements held together by cement. The problem in concrete is largely the cement, which accounts for 8% of global emissions and represents about 80% of concrete’s carbon output, partly due to the cement production process, which requires heating limestone to about 1,450 degree celcius.
Thankfully, there are tools at hand we can use to significantly reduce the carbon impacts of concrete both at the demand and supply side, some of which are tackled by the Congressional bills and some of which are not.
Build Back Better would help build the market for lower carbon cement. Part of this is via the circular economy: adding other materials to that are currently just waste from other processes. These include blast-furnace slag from steel production, fly ash from coal power plants, silica fume, calcined clays and other industrial wastes. ArcelorMittal, for example, sells blast furnace slag to Ecocem as an input in their cement process. Depending on the technology, this reduces CO2 consumption by 50% to 80% along with keeping waste from landfill.
Several companies are also looking at making concrete act more like a carbon sink by producing cements that harden by absorbing CO2. CarbonCure, for example, claims to be able to lower CO2 by 10-30%.
While a longer shot, we may be able to avoid concrete altogether by using other materials to pave our roads. A number of entrepreneurs are looking at ways to add lingin, derived from plant cells, to asphalt. More radical, and perhaps more dubious approaches, are attempting to use recycled plastic as a stand-alone road surface material. PlasticRoad has achieved this in the Netherlands, but only for bicycle-grade, not automotive-grade, roads.
No matter what happens to the Build Back Better and Infrastructure bills, there are a number of demand side solutions that need to be pursued.
Perhaps the smartest policy step is to question when we build new roads. Certainly many emerging markets are experiencing population growth that necessitates investments in new roads to handle buses and trucks. But for mature markets like North America, Europe, and Japan, we should avoid constructing new roads, or the widening of existing roads. Every single attempt at freeway widening has only resulted in more traffic (called induced demand). For poorer countries, infrastructure spending can bring needed economic and social benefits; in developed markets, however, new road spending doesn’t and also hurts the environment.
Moreover, the process of applying and reapplying concrete, whether on roads or in buildings, is fairly unsophisticated and is ready for software planning tools to help assess exactly how much concrete needs to be used in a given application. This represents a clear opportunity for venture-scale startups.
Finally, we should be smarter about road use. As we segregate traffic lanes and add micro mobility lanes and pedestrian sidewalks, a thinner layer of concrete could save billions of dollars and reduce concrete use, as the concrete thickness required is a fraction of what it is for roads that carry cars and trucks. Paris is one of many cities leading the way; Mayor Anne Hidalgo recently announced a 250 million Euro biking plan, which includes more than 180km of newly segregated bike lanes.
Build Back Better and the Infrastructure bill offer a giant jolt of support to the market for low-carbon concrete and cement. But regardless of how the final dollar amount of either bill turns out, there are great opportunities on the demand side for policy makers, startups and investors to create much needed systemic change.
🎙Startup Series
This week, Jason caught up with Iggy Bassi, Founder & CEO of Cervest. Cervest offers cloud-based Climate Intelligence (CI) to enable organizations to manage and adapt to climate risk at an asset level.
✨Highlights
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