But not a climate killer

Concrete has enormous potential as a CO2 reservoir

Concrete is likely to be an excellent carbon dioxide storage medium.(Bild: grooveriderz - stock.adobe.com)

Swiss researchers have high hopes for concrete. This is because it could permanently store the excess CO2 currently in the atmosphere within 100 years.

In order to reduce the CO2 concentration to the target level of 1988, an estimated 400 billion tons of carbon must be removed from the atmosphere, as the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (Empa) explained in a press release on Monday. According to the results published in the journal "Resources, Conservation and Recycling", the 400 billion tons of excess carbon could be stored in building materials such as concrete by the middle of the next century.

Atmosphere as a "mine" with CO2 as the raw material of the future
For the study, the researchers compared the mass of materials used worldwide, such as concrete, asphalt and plastics, with the amount of carbon that needs to be removed from the atmosphere. However, the calculations are based on the assumption that sufficient renewable energy will be available after 2050 to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, as the process proposed by the researchers is very energy-intensive.

 "Mining the Atmosphere"
The study is part of the "Mining the Atmosphere" research initiative. According to Empa, its aim is to create a completely new global economic model and a corresponding industrial sector that uses CO2 as the raw material of the future. CO2 is first converted into chemical raw materials such as methane or methanol. These are then further processed to replace conventional building materials and products that are currently made from crude oil or natural gas.