Cement, the “glue” that holds concrete together, gradually “breathes in” and stores millions of tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air over the lifetimes of buildings and infrastructure. A new study from the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub quantifies this process, carbon uptake, at a national scale for the first time.
Using a novel approach, the research team found that the cement in U.S. buildings and infrastructure sequesters over 6.5 million metric tons of CO2 annually. This corresponds to roughly 13 percent of the process emissions — the CO2 released by the underlying chemical reaction — in U.S. cement manufacturing.