Advanced building materials could store the equivalent of roughly half of human-made carbon dioxide emissions and offer a major new pathway to addressing climate change, according to a new study.
The research published this month in Science highlights a chief question facing climate targets and efforts to decarbonize the energy sector: where to safely and permanently store potentially billions of tons of CO2 pulled from the air and from industrial emitters.
Because buildings can be constructed almost anywhere, they could avoid some of the transportation challenges in moving greenhouse gases to an ideal storage spot, according to the researchers. They also could prevent some of the concerns raised about carbon sequestration, such as gas leakage from underground rocks or the potential for acidifying oceans, they said.
“Building materials can be a good option for carbon storage given the massive quantity of materials produced each year and the long lifetime and durability of these materials,” said Elisabeth Van Roijen, a postdoctoral researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the paper’s lead author.
