Carbon Removal + Concrete!
Awards Selected
Concrete, the world’s most common building material, has the potential to safely and durably store billions of tons of carbon dioxide removed from the air. For its inaugural campaign, 4 Corners founding partners Boulder County, Flagstaff, Sante Fe, and Salt Lake City are catalyzing the integration of carbon removal and concrete with innovation grants that will turn ready-to-go breakthroughs into real world projects.
Partners
Summary
Concrete, the world’s most common building material, has the potential to safely and durably store billions of tons of carbon dioxide removed from the air. For its inaugural campaign, 4 Corners founding partners Boulder County, Flagstaff, Sante Fe, and Salt Lake City are set to catalyze the integration of carbon removal and concrete with innovation grants that will turn ready-to-go breakthroughs into real world projects in the Western United States.
Congratulations to our 4 Awardees!
In January 2023 the 4 Corners Carbon Coalition awarded $390,000 in catalytic grants
to enable four amazing projects, each involving different technologies and methods
that will achieve carbon removal in very different ways.
DAC-to-Concrete
CarbonBuilt, AirCapture, Block-Lite
Flagstaff, Arizona
Key words: Direct Air Capture (DAC), CO₂ Curing, Mineralization, Masonry Blocks
CarbonBuilt will partner with AirCapture and Block-Lite concrete to retrofit Block-Lite’s Flagstaff masonry plant to reduce the carbon footprint of their concrete by 50-100%. This project will be a first-of-its-kind in the world, creating an ultra-low carbon concrete product plant that uses modular direct air capture (DAC)-sourced CO₂ removed directly from the air to cure concrete blocks. CO2 mineralized through this process is permanently removed from the atmosphere. The system will remove and avoid up to 3,000 tonnes of CO2 per year.
The Boulder Block
Travertine
Boulder, Colorado
Key words: Mineralization, Concrete Blocks, Cement Substitution
This project will demonstrate the feasibility of incorporating carbon-negative calcium carbonate (CNPCC) into blended hydraulic cements for permanent carbon dioxide removal and sequestration. The project will determine the impact of substituting up to 15wt.% of Travertine’s CNPCC, produced at our Boulder CO facility, in place of ordinary Portland cement to develop a blended cement mortar that substantially reduces the overall carbon intensity of cement production.
Algae-Based Regenerative Quarry
Minus Materials
Lyons, Colorado
Key words: Microalgae, Limestone Substitution
With this breakthrough demonstration project Minus Materials will install and operate a first-of-its-kind “regenerative quarry” pilot project in Boulder County that will support the production of carbon-negative biorenewable limestone using microalgae. Limestone produced can be used as a substitute for conventional emissions intensive ‘clinker’, the base component of Portland cement.
Carbon-Negative Biomineral (Hemp) Structural Insulated Wall Panel System
Citizens for Clean Energy, Inc.
The Hemp Co2llective
Durango, Colorado
Key words: Hempcrete, Biochar, Structural Panels
Industrial hemp removes carbon from the air via photosynthesis faster than any other agricultural rotation crop. This project, the first of its kind in the Four Corners region, will build carbon negative wall panels for an 1,800 ft^2 two story office warehouse to demonstrate hempcrete structural panels that sequester carbon in the wall structure. The project will also store carbon in the form of biochar in cementitious building materials.