How Aware and Active is the Swedish Building and Real Estate Sector in Climate-Smart Concrete?

Abstract

Carbon dioxide has long proven to be one of the greenhouse gases that affects our planet's climate and environment. With the forthcoming European Union goals and Sweden's own net-zero goal, it is required that the building and real estate sector works with climate-smart materials to construct future buildings. The net-zero goal by 2045 requires a common effort from all companies to find innovative solutions in order to reduce carbon dioxide emissions sharply. This study investigates how aware and active the building and real estate sector is in climatesmart concrete (CSC) through a survey and comparison of environmental product declarations (EPDs). Climatesmart is a term for concrete that contains a lower percentage of Portland cement clinker than traditional concrete. This research aims to examine how far the development has taken place and to evaluate how the market has adopted the newly available products. It is also assessed which alternative additive materials are the most common as well as advantages and disadvantages of the CSC. A questionnaire is created, and the survey is sent out to companies. A comparison is made between three different EPDs of the CSC and two references for concrete with the ordinary Portland cement clinker. Reference concrete 1 is a standard value, and reference concrete 2 is an EPD value. A reference building is used to calculate the volume and weight of its utilized concrete. The three types of the CSC are compared with the reference concrete 1, and the results show a carbon dioxide reduction of 29.3%. However, the comparison of these three types of the CSC with the reference concrete 2 demonstrates a carbon dioxide reduction of 2.8%. In addition, it is concluded that the future will require the building and real estate sector to invest time and training to work with the CSC further.

Important Criteria for Swedish Construction Companies to Choose Environmentally Friendly Concrete

“…The feasibility of developing a green concrete product from municipal solid wastes incineration residues was examined by Zhang et al [21]. Bahrami et al [22] investigated how aware and active the Swedish building and real estate sector is in climate-smart concrete through a survey and comparison of environmental product declarations. The potential of EFC to reduce the environmental impact of OCBC through different ways has been resulted in most of the mentioned studies, however, despite this valuable potential and the importance of reducing the climate impact of OCBC in line with achieving the Sweden's climate target, the Swedish construction industry has not widely used EFC yet, therefore, the purpose of this research is to explore important criteria for the Swedish construction companies to use EFC instead of OCBC in their projects.…”

Carbon Dioxide Emissions from Various Structural Frame Materials of Single-Family Houses in Nordic Countries

“…The extensive processing of concrete during its production requires concrete to be recycled after its use, mainly to mitigate damage to the environment and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, particularly carbon dioxide. Further, the cement clinker utilised in heating during the production of cement is expected to be replaced by another binder, such as slag or fly ash [4]. This solution is expected to reduce the total greenhouse gas emissions from the production of concrete for house frames.…”