Built to remove carbon

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By Christopher Bataille, Science. 

Excerpt: According to current climate science, global temperatures will continue to rise until net carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions reach zero (1)—that is, when the amount of CO2 added to the atmosphere is balanced by the amount removed. Given current projected emissions, 2 billion to 15 billion tonnes (Gt) of CO2 may need to be removed from the atmosphere annually to meet the goal of the 2015 Paris Agreement to limit global warming below 2°C and preferably to 1.5°C above preindustrial temperatures (2, 3). ...Van Roijen et al. (4) report that replacing traditional building materials with CO2-storing alternatives could sequester carbon at the billion-tonne level. ...Building materials such as asphalt, wood, stone, steel, and concrete are foundational to human civilization and have large global demands, ...~30 Gt of concrete are used each year in the world (5). Some of these materials are also major contributors to CO2 emissions. ...Cement production accounts for 7.8% of CO2 and 5.1% of greenhouse gas emissions (6). ...Van Roijen et al. performed quantitative analyses of CO2 storage capacities of key building materials based on 2016 global consumption of each material. ...Although several different building materials were analyzed for their CO2 storage potential, asphalt aggregates, bricks, cement, and concrete aggregates demonstrated the largest storage potentials because of their sheer demands. Van Roijen et al. show that replacing just traditional cement and concrete aggregates with CO2-storing materials could remove 13.1 Gt of atmospheric CO2 annually.... 

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