Liquid granite and the hunt for a carbon-neutral cement

Standard, or Portland, cement is made by heating limestone or clay to around 1,500C. This use of energy and the decomposition of the limestone as it cooks releases copious amounts of CO₂. As the carbon reduction targets from global climate agreements begin to bite, sorting out cement will become a priority.

Engineers have been working hard on the problem in recent years, with a range of approaches to cutting the environmental impact of the construction industry: some have tried synthetic polymers that would remove the need for limestone; others have fiddled with how cement is used in buildings. The latest on the block is Liquid Granite, a binding material that, according to its inventor, could almost entirely replace cement with a powder made from recycled waste materials.

Liquid Granite replaces the need for more than two-thirds of this Portland cement when making concrete, thereby saving the associated carbon emissions. “One of the biggest culprits of carbon footprint is cement, which we use in making concrete – Liquid Granite does away with most of the use of cement. The amount used is pretty small,” says Prof Pal Mangat of Sheffield Hallam University, who came up with the product. “Potentially, by the time we’re finished with this developmental technology, it’ll be close to zero.”

Mangat is cagey about the exact formulation of Liquid Granite, and with good reason: by 2020, the French bank Credit Agricole estimates, demand for cement will be 50% greater than today, and a new carbon-free building material could reap huge rewards. All that Mangat will say is that Liquid Granite is made from an inorganic powder, 30-70% of which is recycled industrial waste materials. Using the same aggregates as normal concrete, it could be used anywhere cement is but with a fraction of the carbon footprint.

“In some applications it’s more suitable than concrete. For example, one of the main areas we are currently exploiting it is fire-resistant building materials,” he says. “It has good fire-resistant properties, unlike concrete, which explodes upon exposure to high temperatures.”

There has already been interest from the building industry, with Liquid Granite has already been used in fire-rated lintels at the Olympic Village and Stratford Shopping Centre in east London.

Others are hot on Mangat’s heels. Novacem, based in London, last year created a cement that has a negative carbon footprint over its lifetime. His invention uses magnesium silicates, which emit no CO₂ when heated, and the processing is carried out at a much lower temperature than that required for Portland cement. In addition, the cement absorbs CO₂ as it hardens – each tonne could remove around 0.6 tonnes of the greenhouse gas over its lifetime.

Transforming a global industry as established as construction was never going to be simple. But tackling the problem of cement seems a good place to start.

Climate talks must consider water

The importance of water must not be overlooked when negotiators come to the table for the Copenhagen climate talks in December.

This will be the central message of a day of campaigning by senior UN officials, NGOs and governments held to coincide with the ongoing UNFCCC talks in Barcelona this week.

The latest version of the negotiating text on water adaptation, which will form part of the COP15 agenda, has removed specific reference to water management as part of a climate change adaptation strategy.

Many leading voices believe that while greenhouse gases are bound to be the key consideration, water should not be sidelined in the debate and are now lobbying to have the issue reinistated on the texts.

Speakers at the Water Day in Barcelona on Tuesday, November 3 include Pasquale Steduto, chairman of UN-Water, Xianfu Lu, programme officer, Adaptation, Technology and Science Programme, UNFCCC and Danish Ambassador Niels Pultz.

Sam Bond

5 November, 2009

Australia’s bad faith at climate negotiations triggers Africa walkout

Launceston, Thursday 5 November 2009

Kevin Rudd has been singled out by a leading African climate negotiator
as a leader failing to live up to his political promise as a meeting at
global climate negotiations chaired by Australian negotiators ended with
African nations walking out in protest.

The 55 African nations, supported by all other developing nation
negotiating blocs (G77 plus China, the Alliance of Small Island States
(AOSIS) and the Least Developed Countries group), are calling for
developed nations to commit to binding targets in the order of 40% below
1990 levels by 2020 before negotiations continue on other, less critical
issues.

“Kevin Rudd cannot claim to be a ‘friend of the chair’ at the global
climate negotiations while his woeful targets are undermining meaningful
action,” Australian Greens Deputy Leader, Senator Christine Milne said.

“African representatives are rightly pointing out that their people are
dying now because of the historic and current behaviour of rich
countries like Australia.

“Kevin Rudd’s woeful 5% target and the unreasonable conditions on his
still too weak 25% maximum offer are part of the problem.

“The Greens are the only group in Australia’s parliament whose
commitment to science-based climate action would actually deliver an
agreement in Copenhagen.”

Australian negotiators were chairing a ‘trust building’ meeting on
behalf of the ‘Umbrella Group’, including the USA, Canada and others.
However, African negotiators led a walkout when it became clear that
meaningful emissions reduction targets would not be on the table.

Sudanese delegate and lead negotiator for the G77 plus China, Lumumba
Stanislaus-Kaw Di-Aping, said in his press conference: ‘If there is
anything that you know about politics and political manifestos is that
they are worth very little. Tell me of any politician who delivered on
his political manifesto. Is it Gordon Brown? Is it Kevin Rudd?’

“The African nations should be applauded for their courage in standing
up for what is necessary in the face of climate crisis and their move
has been vindicated by the decision to focus the majority of remaining
negotiations in Barcelona on targets,” Senator Milne said.

“While some such as the Climate Institute in Australia have been keen to
suggest that financing mechanisms from rich to poor countries is the key
to negotiations, it is becoming clear that, while financing is vital,
the targets are the primary and critical piece of the puzzle.

“Focussing on financing instead of targets is only giving cover to the
Rudd Government and others who are trying to portray themselves as
leading on climate change while their actions show they are dragging
badly.

“Jeffrey Sachs has added his voice to the growing chorus of global
experts including Lord Nicholas Stern and Kofi Annan who say that it
would be better not to conclude negotiations this year than to risk a
political agreement which will lock in failure on the climate crisis.

“A failure to agree this year is far better than an agreement to fail.”

Tim Hollo
Media Adviser
Senator Christine Milne | Australian Greens Deputy Leader and Climate
Change Spokesperson
Suite SG-112 Parliament House, Canberra ACT | P: 02 6277 3588 | M: 0437
587 562
http://www.christinemilne.org.au/| www.GreensMPs.org.au
<http://www.greensmps.org.au/>

PROTECTING THE CLIMATE IS A JOB FOR EVERYONE

5 November, 2009

Copenhagen is an opportunity for ethics to trump economics

US Senators on both sides of the aisle are doing all they can to block action with talk of danger to jobs and the US economy. Countries in eastern Europe say that contributing too much will wreck their fragile economies, and wealthier westerners are unwilling to fix numbers, hoping to translate silence into a stronger bargaining position with the US and Japan. No one wants to pay too much, and everyone wants someone else to pay more. This is only rational, isn’t it, just part of getting a fair deal for all? It depends on how one counts the cost of climate change.

Some insist that the options on the table are simply too expensive. No deal is better than a deal which costs us too much. Money is the determining factor – not warnings about a grim future or something as wishy-washy as concern for the poor. As idiotic as this sounds, it nevertheless gets you where you live, right in the wallet, and many people actually fall for it. Recall Bush’s excuse for pulling the US out of Kyoto, the world’s first failed opportunity for a climate deal: “complying with those mandates would have a negative economic impact, with layoffs of workers and price increases for consumers.” He does at least speak plainly. Relieved of some of the fanfare, the climate talks are in danger of stalling because of thoughts not too distant from plain words like these. Serious action on climate change will damage our current wealth, so we won’t do it.

There is something fundamentally vicious about putting money at the heart of the negotiations. No doubt matters are excruciatingly complex, and reasonable people can argue about how best to spend money on climate change and the world’s other ills, but that’s not what’s happening. We are in danger of failing to act simply because some maintain that the cost of action is too high. Think about the relevant causes and effects of climate change: our easy lives of high-energy consumption and the damage we are doing to the planet. Consider the human beings who will suffer because of our easy lives. Avoiding meaningful action on climate change just because it might be too expensive is on a moral par with harming other people for money. Call it what it is: keeping money in exchange for the suffering of others.

Ethics sometimes has to trump economics. If you have a moral obligation to take action, you don’t get out of it with talk of expense. Would you forgive someone for avoiding a moral duty because he thought it might cost him too much? He’d rather not abandon plans for a festive weekend in Spain, so those child care payments will have to wait. No judge would let a father get away with that. Sometimes we have to tighten our belts and do the right thing, even if it costs us more than we’d like.

The west has a long history of industrialisation, and it has done the most damage to our world. Therefore the west has the largest moral obligation to take action. No doubt all countries, even those industrialising much later, have moral responsibilities too, but the point is that our obligations click in no matter what the rest of the world does, no matter what other countries pay. We have to pay for our fair share of the damage, not fight hard for the cheapest way out.

Some think that talking about moral obligations just makes us feel guilty, and we’ve had enough of that. Others collapse in the face of complexity, groaning that we can’t do enough in the short time that we have. Don’t believe a word of it. Human beings can move mountains in an instant when they see that something is wrong – the obvious examples are the right ones to think about. If our representatives have forgotten the moral demand for action on climate change, it’s up to the rest of us to do something – maybe remind them that they’ve mistaken money for the things which really matter.

• James Garvey is secretary of the Royal Institute of Philosophy and author of The Ethics of Climate Change

A melted arctic: gold mine or honey trap ?

A melted Arctic: gold mine or honey trap?

Andrew Marszal

3rd November, 2009

As the melting Arctic ice cap opens a new ocean to the world, governments and private speculators are rushing to cash in on lucrative resource deposits and shipping lanes. But they may find these virgin waters a dangerous place to do business…

When the U.N. Conference on Climate Change convenes in Copenhagen next month, one inconvenient truth little discussed will be the benefits Arctic nations – including the Danish hosts – stand to gain from global warming.

It has become generally accepted that, as ice starts to cover less and less of the north pole each year, an emergent new ocean will offer prospects of untold mineral resources and unparalleled access to distant markets via new, shorter shipping routes.

Numerous recent reports have made startling predictions regarding the rate of this ice break-up. Last month, introducing the results of the Catlin Arctic Survey, Professor Wadhams of the University of Cambridge declared a new consensus that ‘the summer ice will disappear within twenty to thirty years’, with most of that melt occurring in the next ten.

He went on to say, ‘That means you’ll be able to treat the Arctic as if it were essentially an open sea in the summer and have transport across the Arctic Ocean’.

A brave – or foolish – new world?

Though the ice certainly is thinning and receding rapidly, politicians…

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4 November, 2009

“All of us agreed that it is imperative for us to redouble our efforts in the weeks between now and the Copenhagen meeting to assure that we create a framework for progress in dealing with (a) potential ecological disaster,” Mr Obama said after talks with European Commission head Jose Manuel Barroso and Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt of Sweden, who holds the EU presidency, and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana.

Ms Merkel compared the battle against climate change to the struggle to bring down the Berlin Wall two decades ago this week.

She also backed Western calls for emerging nations to do more. “I’m convinced that once we in Europe and America show ourselves ready to adopt binding agreements, we will also be able to persuade China and India to join in,” she said.

But even as she and Mr Obama – praised by Mr Barroso for having “changed the climate on climate negotiations” – stressed the need for a more concerted effort to solidify a framework agreement at Copenhagen, US Republicans shunned a meeting on an Obama-backed bill to set the first US requirements on curbing carbon emissions blamed for global warming.

Asked what impact Ms Merkel’s speech might have on the US debate, Senator James Inhofe, the top Republican on the committee looking at the climate legislation, said: “None whatsoever.”

Democrat Ben Nelson was similarly blunt, answering the same question with a simple “no”.

Earlier, Mr Barroso said he was “worried by the lack of progress in negotiations” ahead of the December 7-18 climate meeting, and acknowledged a binding pact would not be ready by then.

The summit in the Danish capital has been set up to seal a treaty to succeed the landmark Kyoto Protocol, whose obligations to cut carbon emissions expire in 2012.

“Of course we are not going to have a full-fledged binding treaty, Kyoto-type, by Copenhagen,” Mr Barroso said. “This is obvious. There is no time for that.”

Mr Barroso said a meeting next year in Mexico could finalise a treaty but said Copenhagen needed to come up with the framework of the deal, and that the world’s largest economy in particular should take a lead role.

“What we are asking is the United States to show leadership in this, such an important issue,” Mr Barroso said.

He warned against a protracted process of negotiations akin to the stalled Doha round of global trade liberalisation talks.

“I think it is important not to give up before, because if we start … now to speak about Plan B in Copenhagen we’ll probably end in Plan F for failure.”

“Let’s not do to Copenhagen what has been happening with trade in Doha, where systematically every year we are postponing.”

Sweden’s Mr Reinfeldt said the United States should at least agree on targets for cutting emissions and on financing for developing nations.

“I said that we need to have a clear commitment on targets and on financing coming from the United States,” Mr Reinfeldt said after talks with key senators.

“We can understand if it’s not possible to have everything in place exactly now. But we want a full agreement in Copenhagen and we are able to work through details in the months that come after Copenhagen,” he said.

He spoke as pre-summit negotiations were under way in Barcelona, Spain, where divisions again ran deep between key developed nations and emerging economies.

An EU summit last week agreed that developing nations will need 100 billion euros per year by 2020 to tackle climate change, but failed to nail down how much it would give.

The US role in Copenhagen is overshadowed by the debate in Congress.

The House of Representatives in June narrowly passed the plan to curb carbon emissions but the bill – already criticised by other developed nations as not ambitious enough – is bogged down in the Senate.

Some Republicans, like former president George W. Bush, resist action on climate change as too costly to the economy and demand further commitments by emerging nations.

Category: News

Liquid granite and the hunt for a carbon-neutral cement