Concrete is literally the backbone of our infrastructure, but it often takes a bad rap for the carbon intensity of its key ingredient: cement.
Research just out of MIT’s Concrete Sustainability Hub finds that concrete has some good properties that can be overlooked if assessments of the building material do not truly look at the entire lifecycle.
And beyond that, the studies say, taking a look at how we put concrete to use can make a big difference: For example, using concrete to pave roads and highways can yield greater fuel efficiency for cars than asphalt.
The approach MIT took on lifecycle assessment and benchmarking is as important as the findings that resulted from researchers’ extensive modeling projects on buildings and roads, reports on the research said. MIT released its studies, “Methods, Impacts, and Opportunities in the Concrete Building Life Cycle” and “Methods, Impacts, and Opportunities in the Concrete Pavement Life Cycle” last week.