Concrete is the most widely used human-made material. It is made by combining water, cement, and sand or gravel. While cement gives concrete the strength it is valued for, it is responsible for 90% of concrete’s CO₂ emissions and 7% of global CO₂ emissions.
Roughly 14 billion cubic meters are used in the construction sector each year, which is expected to double by 2060. Because of its large scale of utilization, storing CO₂ in concrete provides an excellent opportunity for permanently removing large amounts of CO₂.
Permanent carbon storage in concrete
CarbonCure’s award-winning carbon removal technologies offer permanent, verifiable, and scalable carbon removals and reductions for the concrete industry. CarbonCure injects captured CO₂ into the concrete mix, immediately turning into rock. Once mineralized, CO₂ is locked forever into the solid structure of building elements and will not be released back into the atmosphere, even if the concrete is demolished or recycled.
CarbonCure technologies are currently used in over 600 concrete production plants across 30 countries and have avoided or removed over 246,000 tons of CO₂. Carbon removals are calculated under the Verra-approved
CarbonCure’s technology won the grand prize in the
CO₂ emissions into usable products. With a simple retrofit executed in a day, CarbonCure turns concrete plants into carbon removal storage solutions.
Incentivizing sustainable concrete
In addition to permanently storing CO₂, the concrete containing mineralized CO₂ has improved strength, allowing concrete producers to reduce the cement content by 4-6%, reducing concrete’s carbon footprint. An average building built with this concrete would save approximately 680,000 kg of embodied carbon, equivalent to the carbon absorbed by 360 ha of forests in a year. Every cubic meter of concrete produced using CarbonCure’s technology saves an average of 17 kg of carbon emissions from the atmosphere.
CarbonCure aims to reduce 500 million metric tonnes of embodied CO₂ emissions annually by making their concrete technologies a global standard. Early adopters benefit from winning sustainable building projects and creating new green jobs in local communities. In addition, concrete producers using CarbonCure technologies receive a portion of carbon credit revenues, incentivizing them to adopt more of CarbonCure technologies and provide maximum carbon savings. For example, in the United States alone, there are 274 plants generating carbon credits with CarbonCure’s technology across 22 states, employing roughly 13,000 people. CarbonCure has shared $3M in credit revenue with its producers.
Concrete producers can also reduce freshwater use by 17-20% and virgin cement by 8-10% when using CarbonCure’s Ready Mix and Reclaimed Water technologies together.
Purchasing CarbonCure carbon credits helps accelerate the adoption of CarbonCure’s technologies to store more CO₂ in concrete and scale the decarbonization of the concrete industry. CarbonCure issued its first-ever Verra-certified carbon credits in March 2023, and Compensate is one of the first buyers.
CarbonCure aims to reduce 500 million metric tonnes of embodied CO₂ emissions annually by making their concrete technologies a global standard.