Climate change
Carbon dioxide (CO2), a
greenhouse gas, is of key concern in climate change. In the UK the
construction of our built environment accounts for 10% of
CO2 emissions. Of this, the manufacture and delivery of
concrete, as the most widely used material in
construction, accounts for 2.6% of our CO2
emissions 1. This should be compared to the use of the
built environment which accounts for 50% of our CO2
emissions, and the 26% of our CO2 emissions that arise
from transport 2. These figures show how important the
in-use impacts of our built environment are
compared to the embodied impacts. It is vital that we manage
the natural and built environment and our resources to ensure a
better quality of life for everyone, now and for future
generations, moving towards what is called 'one planet living'
3.
Under the Climate Change UK Programme the UK
plans to deliver the Kyoto Protocol targets of reducing the full
basket of greenhouse gases by 12.5% below the 1990 levels. The long
term goal is to reduce CO2 emissions by some 60% of
their 1990 level by 2050 with real progress by 2020. Ongoing
innovations in concrete technology mean that concrete can and
should make a significant contribution to the achievement of this
target 4. The table 'Embodied carbon dioxide and
construction materials' can be downloaded as a PDF. It shows the embodied CO2
(ECO2) for several different types of concrete, steel and timber
(different boundary conditions may apply due to age of available
data for timber and steel, see references).