Videos, Webinars & More

Ignacio Cariaga, commercial sustainability director with Heidelberg Materials, discusses how there is no single technology, lever, nor single company that can achieve net zero concrete without proper education, collaboration and advocacy work to ultimately change building codes.

Join Dr. Matthew Adams, an associate professor and co-director of the materials and structures (MatSLab) at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, as he discusses how governmental agencies - local, regional, and federal - are the primary purchasers of concrete materials within the U.S. and around the world. Governments are positioned to lead the way in procuring low embodied carbon concrete (LECC) systems, reducing the global impact of concrete on climate change. Despite rigorous scientific research showing many options for reducing concrete's embodied carbon below standard levels, many agencies in the U.S. are still specifying concrete using prescriptive approaches that support outdated, high embodied carbon mixtures. Procurement processes, lack of technical understanding, and a lack of will amongst specifying agencies are all barriers to the implementation of LECC mixture design techniques. This presentation discusses the current range of policy initiatives to encourage procurement of LECC, the difficulties experienced in their implementation, and the impact that the active policies have had on procurement.

NEU Technical Director Sureka Sumanasooriya, PhD, introduces the functions of NEU and how NEU is helping with the education and implementation of low-carbon cements and concrete.

Join Dean Frank, P.E., executive director of NEU, as he explains the alphabet soup of LCAs, EPDs and PCRs and how they are all involved in sustainability.

Larry Rowland at Heidelberg Materials discusses Heidelberg's steps to reduce carbon emissions in the built environment. Circular economy and carbon capture and storage are discussed, as well as Heidelberg's Ecocem products.

Concrete materials and mixture proportions are changing to reduce the global warming potential (GWP) associated with concrete production. To reduce the GWP of concrete the industry is moving to replace cement clinker with supplementary cementitious materials (SCM, e.g., natural pozzolans, recycled glass, industrial by-products, or carbonated cement fines) that are emerging to reduce the GWP of concrete mixtures. This presentation will discuss the need for accurate quantification of the reactivity of these materials. Calculation of the environmental product declaration (EPD) of concrete will be discussed along with the shortcomings of using this approach.