Climate Mitigation through Adopting a Low-Carbon Concrete Building Code

Marin County in California adopts a low-carbon concrete building code. “This new code applies to all private and public construction projects involving concrete in Marin County and will take effect January 1, 2020”, announced on the Sierra Club California website (Marin County Adopts, 2019).

The announcement further says that “the low-carbon concrete ordinance is part of a larger wave of policies that aim to address embodied carbon emissions in building materials”. The county also hopes that local governments in the Bay Area and beyond will pass similar policies (Marin County Adopts, 2019).

Local government policies and ordinances that apply climate mitigation actions send a message that climate change is happening. Therefore, we should act now rather than wait for more extreme climate events to occur before doing climate mitigation and adaptation, as these would be much costlier, as studies show.

Cement is one of the most widely used materials, as most of the built environment is made from it. However, its highly carbon-intensive production accounts for around 8% of the world’s total carbon dioxide emissions. China is the world’s largest producer of cement, followed by India and the European Union (Rodgers, 2018).

Some concrete and cement manufacturers are already using technology to reduce CO2 emissions during production, which is quite encouraging (The Future with, 2018).

Marin County has instituted a climate mitigation solution through the adoption of the low-carbon concrete building code, which is a model for other towns and cities.

PHOTO CREDIT: Marin County Civic Center by By Fizbin at en. wikipedia – fizbin’s crappy camera., Public Domain, Link