Capture and reuse opportunities for CO₂ in the construction sector in the next 100 years techxplore.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from techxplore.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Capturing carbon dioxide emissions helps slow climate change, and the captured CO2 could be used as materials for consumer goods. But is the public ready to accept those goods?
Lucca Henrion, Duo Zhang, Victor C. Li and Volker Sick
Bendable concrete created at the University of Michigan allows for thinner structures with less need for steel reinforcement. Joseph Xu/University of Michigan College of Engineering
One of the big contributors to climate change is right beneath your feet, and transforming it could be a powerful solution for keeping greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere.
The production of cement, the binding element in concrete, accounted for 7% of total global carbon dioxide emissions in 2018. Concrete is one of the most-used resources on Earth, with an estimated 26 billion tons produced annually worldwide. That production isn’t expected to slow down for at least two more decades.
Volker Sick is the DTE Energy Professor of Advanced Energy Research and an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He leads the Global CO2 Initiative at the University of Michigan that seeks to get CO2 capture and use recognized and implemented as a mainstream climate solution. He received awards for teaching, research, and service, including the President’s Award for Distinguished Service in International Education, the Combustion Institute Silver Medal, and the SAE International Leadership Citation. He is a Fellow of SAE International and the Combustion Institute. Prof. Sick holds three degrees in Chemistry and Physical Chemistry from the University of Heidelberg, Germany.
Study Reveals Virtual Conferencing Helps Reduce CO2 Emissions
Written by AZoCleantechFeb 2 2021
A new study at the University of Michigan (UM) reveals that replacement of huge, in-person gatherings by virtual conferencing due to the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a significant decrease in carbon emissions, but such online meetings still pose some environmental costs.
Image credit: Fizkes/shutterstock.com
The study provides a framework for examining and tallying the carbon emissions of an online conference depending on factors including everything from energy utilized by monitors and servers to the resources utilized to manufacture and distribute the computers used.
It comprises a case study demonstrating that a May 2020 virtual conference conducted by the AirMiners carbon removal networking community generated 66 times less greenhouse gas emissions compared to what an in-person gathering in San Francisco would have otherwise produced.