this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2023
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Fortunately there was an advance in this field in just the past year:
https://newatlas.com/materials/carbon-negative-concrete-treated-biochar/
The problem with concrete has long been that you can make carbon-removing-concrete, but architects won't specify it and contractors won't use it. Making it happen at scale isn't just a technical problem around material manufacturing, but a social one around getting people to trust the new material and use it.
Yeah, social attitudes are harder to change than material science for sure. Still have to just tackle it one step at a time though.
We've had people creating carbon-absorbing cement versions for at least 15 years at this point. There are even ones where the end product is chemically identical to Portland Cement.
It's purely a social (and depending on the choice, cost) problem at this point.
Seems like the sort of thing governments should be incentivising.
There's a little bit of that happening, in the form of the US government having recently adopted a low-carbon construction materials requirement, so that architects and contractors will get experience using the new concrete versions on government projects.
hurrah, now let's just hope they do like 100 times more of that, and maybe enact some actual meaningful climate policy and we'll be fine.