Why Carbon Storage in Building Materials is the Next Big Thing

Decarbonization requires that each industry and sector take an inward look at ways to lower their own emissions. However, a new study conducted by researchers at UC Davis and published by Science Magazine in January sheds light on another key aspect of the decarbonization effort: working across sectors to store each other's carbon. The study focuses on the built environment and proposes a whole new way of looking at buildings… as a carbon store.

OurCarbon has been used to store carbon in the built environment in various concrete pours from the Pacific Northwest to the Bay Area since 2022.

While it’s long been known that buildings have their own emissions to handle, researchers have looked at the built environment's ability to store carbon from other sectors and benefit from that carbon reduction. As the study shows in its illuminating title, the researchers found a huge amount of storage potential: over 16 Gigatons of CO2e in annual storage potential! 

According to a 2023 McKinsey study on decarbonizing buildings, the built environment is responsible for roughly 14.4 Gigatons of carbon annually. With 16 gigatons of potential storage within the built environment’s mass, we could conceivably store more carbon within the built environment than the entire sector emits year over year. This finding opens the door for a collaborative value chain in which other industries can decarbonize their supply chains by producing fixed carbons to be stored in buildings.

Of those 16 gigatons, the largest storage potential by far (over 10 of the 16 Gigatons) was found to be replacing aggregates in concrete with carbon negative materials. With a material that can do just that, Bioforcetech’s OurCarbon shows just how much impact this carbon storage pathway can have.

“From the start, we knew that our technology could provide a solution for wastewater treatment with an added value output. Now that OurCarbon is maturing into a full-scale product, we see that its potential uses can even help industries well outside our normal scope. It’s a very exciting next step for the material and the effort to decarbonize as a society.” Dario Presezzi, CEO Bioforcetech

“Bioforcetech’s OurCarbon creates a completely new bridge between wastewater and industry. I love that we can prevent landfill emissions, destroy contaminants in biosolids, and then pass the new material to the built environment where we can store carbon for centuries. It really links up the two sectors in a way that eliminates the idea of waste.” Garrett Benisch, Director of Design Development at Bioforcetech.