Here’s a sentence you won’t hear often: “I love concrete.” But this week, when I visited the Global Innovation Hub of Holcim, a Fortune Global 500 building solutions company, it’s exactly what one executive said. Why? Because of the promise concrete may well hold for a CO2-poor world. “We realized our greatest challenge is our greatest opportunity,” he said.
Construction materials alone account for about 8-10% of global carbon emissions. And after construction, buildings are responsible for 28% of global emissions from heating and cooling. It’s a gigantic share of emissions, and it's surely the greatest yet least talked about challenge of the green transition.
