Green Concrete Activities - 10 years after

Article by Claus V. Nielsen, Danish Technological Institute and Jesper Sand Damtoft, Aalborg Portland.
Featured at Tenth ACI International Conf. on Recent Advances in Concrete Technology and Sustainability Issues. October 2009, Seville, Spain.

Abstract

In 1998 a nationally funded R&D project started in Denmark under the title Danish Centre for Green Concrete. Several green concrete technology solutions were developed and documented thoroughly and since then the cement and concrete industry has kept its focus on sustainability and environmentally friendly concrete production. Today, the green concrete concepts are drawing increasing attention world-wide as realistic contributions to solve the global climate change challenge. The CO2 footprint of concrete is presented and discussed. The green concrete concepts include the use of various residual products such as fly ash in concrete, optimisation of binder composition and use of cement with reduced environmental impact. These aspects are described in the article and the experiences are highlighted. 

Furthermore, the structural designer is shown to have several methods to contribute towards a lower CO2 footprint of a structure. Examples of optimisation and use of high strength materials are given to illustrate this point.

The article presents recommendations on the future of green concrete. Even though many green measures have already been implemented in the cement and concrete industry there is still room for improvements.

Keywords: cement; CO2 footprint; fly ash; green concrete; SCM;