Every year 90 million tonnes of concrete are used in the UK to build bridges, houses, office blocks, roads and much more. This hardy material forms the fabric of the country’s society and the foundations of its future. But concrete production accounts for 8% of global carbon emissions annually.
With the impacts of the climate crisis already been felt in the UK and around the world, it’s critical that we decarbonise the concrete industry. We need to find and scale alternative processes and new technologies that can reduce the embodied carbon emissions resulting from concrete production and use. This is critical to limiting global temperature rise to 1.5C at the very least and averting climate catastrophe.
Our global initiative, ConcreteZero, which is run in partnership with World GBC, brings businesses together to tackle this very pressing issue. Through ConcreteZero, around 30 businesses have already committed to buying and using 30% lower emission concrete by 2025, 50% by 2030 and 100% net zero concrete by 2050 at the very latest.
That’s why we’ve partnered with Innovation Zero and Levidian, the international cleantech congress, to host a roundtable on how cross-sector collaboration can accelerate the development and implementation of concrete/cement clean-technology in the UK. We’ll be bringing together the private and public sector to explore:
- The next steps that will enable the upscale of lower embodied carbon concrete technologies.
- Promising clean-tech innovations and practices that are currently available to scale up in the UK, and how these can be deployed faster.
- How changes in current policies and regulations can accelerate the deployment of lower-carbon concrete technologies.
- How cross-sector collaboration can support investment, research and development of clean tech solutions.
Fully endorsed by the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, Chaired by the Rt. Hon Dr Liam Fox MP and partnered with the UK Government, Innovation Zero welcomes UK innovators across 7 industry sectors, showcasing breakthrough innovations to decarbonise the UK’s economy.
The world class speaker programme puts policymakers next to innovators, links business leaders with government officials and seeks to find the answers to the biggest decarbonisation questions. It will explore how funding can be scaled up to enable the commercialisation of low carbon solutions and how these can be deployed to make sure the UK meets it emissions reductions target.
