The role of concrete in life cycle greenhouse gas emissions of US buildings and pavements
Name
e2021936118.full.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
4.73 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
1c187c3f70bafbb223eccc33939d49d6
Author(s)
Gregory, Jeremy
AzariJafari, Hessam
Vahidi, Ehsan
Guo, Fengdi
Ulm, Franz-Josef
Kirchain, Randolph
Date Issued
September 2021
Journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Publisher
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Citation
Jeremy Gregory, Hessam AzariJafari, Ehsan Vahidi, Fengdi Guo, Franz-Josef Ulm, Randolph Kirchain, The role of concrete in life cycle greenhouse gas emissions of US buildings and pavements, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Sep 2021, 118 (37)
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Concrete is a critical component of deep decarbonization efforts because of both the scale of the industry and because of how its use impacts the building, transportation, and industrial sectors. We use a bottom-up model of current and future building and pavement stocks and construction in the United States to contextualize the role of concrete in greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions strategies under projected and ambitious scenarios, including embodied and use phases of the structures’ life cycle. We show that projected improvements in the building sector result in a reduction of 49% of GHG emissions in 2050 relative to 2016 levels, whereas ambitious improvements result in a 57% reduction in 2050, which is 22.5 Gt cumulative saving. The pavements sector shows a larger difference between the two scenarios with a 14% reduction of GHG emissions for projected improvements and a 65% reduction under the ambitious scenario, which is ∼1.35 Gt. This reduction occurs despite the fact that concrete usage in 2050 in the ambitious scenario is over three times that of the projected scenario because of the ways in which concrete lowers use phase emissions. Over 70% of future emissions from new construction are from the use phase.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
MIT Materials Research Laboratory
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Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2021936118
