NABU Bingen compensates for the carbon footprint of concrete in new buildings
Published by Emily Thomas,
Deputy Editor
World Cement,
The new NABU nature conservation centre is currently under construction on the banks of the Rhine in Bingen-Gaulsheim. The two-piece wooden ensemble is built on floor slabs made of climate-neutral concrete. The Gemünden company installed the approximately 280 cubic metres of concrete on site. Thanks to the optimised composition, the CO2 balance of the EcoPact Zero concrete produced by Holcim in this case is already 23% lower than the industry average. The concrete composition alone saved a good 13 tons of CO2 in production. The remaining CO – in this case it was 44 tons – was fully compensated for by climate protection certificates from MoorFutures.
Bardo Petry, 1st Chairman of the NABU Group Bingen (NABU Bingen and Environment eV), has now received the compensation certificate from MoorFutures for 44 tons of CO from Werner Spilles, Managing Director of Holcim Beton und Betonwaren GmbH. Specifically, the rewetting of the royal bog in Schleswig-Holstein is supported by the purchase of MoorFutures climate protection certificates. This is a contemporary and particularly effective tool for CO2-balancing, because peatlands are the largest and most effective carbon stores on earth. One ton of CO2 corresponds to a certificate. In addition to the strict MoorFutures standard, the climate impact of the Königsmoor project was also verified by TÜV Rheinland in accordance with ISO 14064-2.
“With EcoPact Zero, Holcim offers climate-neutral concrete that largely reduced and compensated for the unavoidable emissions that still remain today. At the same time, we are working hard to reduce CO2 to further significantly reduce the footprint in our concrete products. Depending on the construction project, reductions of up to 50% compared to the industry average are already possible today. The further CO2 reduction in the product is therefore always more desirable for us than compensation,” says Werner Spilles from the ready-mix concrete supplier Holcim.
"Holcim has now consistently implemented an approach that we have long called for as the first concrete manufacturer: On the one hand, the carbon footprint of the material has been significantly reduced. That is a really big step. On the other hand, in the calculation of the CO2, the content of the highly optimised EcoPact Zero concretes not only takes into account the values for the production of the raw materials and for the concrete production, but also all transport routes ”, explains building contractor Tim Gemünden. He adds: “With regard to the transport routes, the counties and municipalities also need to be strengthened make their contribution by enabling the regional extraction of raw materials. In this way, we could reduce unnecessarily long transport routes and significantly reduce the carbon footprint again.”
“For structural reasons, we couldn't completely do without concrete when building the two wooden buildings. But we wanted to reduce the carbon footprint of the concrete floor slabs as well as possible and compensate for the remaining amount. We succeeded in doing this with this climate-neutral solution. The rewetting of bogs is a suitable compensation approach,” explains Bardo Petry.
Read the article online at: https://www.worldcement.com/europe-cis/02072020/nabu-bingen-compensates-for-the-carbon-footprint-of-concrete-in-new-buildings/
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