You might not think that concrete would make an interesting subject for an article but I found this one at Noema by Joe Zadeh pretty interesting. The condensed version is
- Concrete is cement plus aggregate (gravel)
- The carbon emitted in cement production exceeds that produced by the airline industry.
- Concrete degrades over time.
There are no really good ready replacements for concrete. Even now there are skyscrapers going up in Norway and Switzerland that use what is effectively plywood rather than concrete. Time will tell how effective and durable those are.
Some of the plans for reducing carbon emissions require a lot of building and that means a lot of cement production. If it were “one and done” that might be defensible but it isn’t. I question whether those plans will actually achieve the objectives their proponents intend. IMO if you’re genuinely serious about reducing carbon emissions you should want to build less rather than more just as you should want to increase the amount of nuclear power generation rather than reduce it.
The number often bandied about is that one cubic yard (meter?) of concrete is produced for each person each year: ca. 8 billion cubic yards of concrete per year. Add to that wood pulping for paper, new steel production from ore, municipal water softening…
A great many industrial processes produce carbon dioxide. A serious plan to reduce carbon dioxide emissions must shut down a significant amount of industry and transportation and agriculture…
The full suite of Green measures results in a Medieval economy with a total world population of about 500 million, the great majority of which would be either serfs or slaves.