Steel and cement are two materials that no society can do without. Their production comes with a significant carbon footprint, however. To meet zero-emission targets under the Paris Agreement, countries, cities, and industries are depending on new large-scale infrastructure for CO2 transport and storage, renewable electricity and green hydrogen.
We’ve had people creating carbon-absorbing cement versions for at least 15 years at this point. There are even ones where the end product is chemically identical to Portland Cement.
It’s purely a social (and depending on the choice, cost) problem at this point.
Seems like the sort of thing governments should be incentivising.
There’s a little bit of that happening, in the form of the US government having recently adopted a low-carbon construction materials requirement, so that architects and contractors will get experience using the new concrete versions on government projects.
hurrah, now let’s just hope they do like 100 times more of that, and maybe enact some actual meaningful climate policy and we’ll be fine.