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Concrete is a carbon-heavy material and is widely used. With continued focus on sustainability, industry experts have a plan to reach net zero—it starts with carbon accounting. Earlier this year, the Concrete Council of Canada shared its plan with the OAA at the Association’s annual conference held in Sudbury.
As architects and builders strive for net-zero emissions, they must find ways to reduce carbon in all building materials. Some materials, like concrete, are more challenging than others.
More than 4 billion tonnes of cement were produced in 2021, responsible for 8% of global CO2 emissions. As awareness grows around embodied carbon in new builds, high-density cities including Toronto and Vancouver are regulating or incentivizing caps. So, builders are going greener.
But concrete presents a unique problem—it is carbon-heavy, and it’s everywhere.
The Concrete Council of Canada (CCC) has a plan to decarbonize, said Bart Kanters, president of Concrete Ontario, previously known as the Ready Mixed Concrete Association of Ontario. This group of industry suppliers and associations is working to operate more sustainability, with a roadmap to reach net-zero by first measuring baselines.
Kanters outlined the CCC’s carbon accounting mission at the 2023 OAA Conference earlier this year.
The challenge with concrete and carbon
Concrete is among the most widely used substances on the planet, next only to water. It’s become an essential material for everything from infrastructure to sidewalks and parking garages.
And concrete production comes with a big footprint.
Recognizing this, the industry is responding with ambitious reduction targets.
“One of the key issues we’re trying to address is sustainability,” explained Kanters. “In May, we launched our net-zero roadmap for 2050—how the cement and concrete industry is going to move to net zero.”
The goal includes significant milestones, including cutting carbon emissions up to 40% by 2030. The CCC is helping architects and builders get there as a team.
“By grouping our efforts, we’re working in partnership with one another rather than competing,” Kanters said.
The Concrete Council of Canada’s solution for decarbonization
In 2015, various concrete associations joined forces to form the CCC, a united front to promote the industry against competing products while working together toward sustainable solutions. A crucial part of that strategy is carbon accounting.
As Kanters put it at this year’s OAA Conference, “You can’t improve something unless you’re actually measuring it.” The CCC is quantifying carbon impact in order to shrink it.
“As an industry, we’re moving to environmental product declarations [EDPs] to measure the amount of CO₂ per cubic metre that we have in a product,” he said. “We then encourage discussions with designers, contractors, and owners on how we can meet the same performance properties they’re looking for in concrete, but with lower carbon intensity.”
Prior to 2022, EDP averages represented national numbers, which did not reflect regional nuances and local building materials. Or, as Kanters put it, “drastic differences between Vancouver and downtown Toronto when it comes to weather and construction conditions, which have an impact on carbon intensity.”
Switching to provincial EDP averages is a significant step forward as the CCC encourages project-level carbon accounting.
Kanters outlined this emissions measurement system: “We’re asking people to work out the carbon budget for the concrete on each project. To go through and identify, for each of the concrete mix designs, what the actual amount of carbon was for the whole project. The big step for this year and next is moving people to accounting.”
A big step indeed, as Kanters points out, since no single project has yet to do a full accounting.
Once an accurate carbon budget is established, designers and builders can work on conservation.
“We’re suggesting a target of 10 percent carbon reduction in relation to the industry average for Ontario,” Kanters advised. He reiterates that you can’t fix what you don’t measure.
Looking ahead to a net-zero future
Decarbonization won’t be simple or straightforward. But with carbon accounting initiatives like those from the CCC, efforts to measure and reduce CO₂ emissions are streamlined within one of the most vital industries, construction. Kanter is optimistic, looking ahead to future targets.
“Moving forward, the question will be: what’s a reasonable number for short-term carbon reductions? We may be able to do much better than 10 percent. We need to sum up the carbon on a whole project to know that number going forward,” he said.
There’s hope yet for achieving the industry’s collective goal—a sustainable future built on net-zero emissions.
