To help agencies reduce the environmental impacts incurred during the production of paving concrete before it leaves the concrete plant, the National Concrete Pavement Technology Center (CP Tech Center) recently published the Guide for Reducing the Cradle-to-Gate Embodied Carbon Emissions of Paving Concrete.
Cradle to gate describes the earliest portions of a product’s life cycle, from initial material production—such as aggregate mining—through product manufacture at the concrete plant. Embodied carbon emissions are a measure of a material’s cradle-to-gate global warming potential, which is estimated from the energy used to extract, process, and transport the raw materials as well as the emissions generated from the manufacturing processes.
The strategies presented in this guide can serve as an important early step in bringing attention to the need for broader carbon reduction during a pavement system life cycle, while implementing quantifiable change at the outset of a project. These strategies are well within the scope of the target audience. That is, the agency personnel involved in specifying concrete paving mixtures, their consultants, and contractors and concrete mixture designers can immediately implement these strategies as part of their concrete paving projects going forward.
The guide was published with funding from and as part of the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) cooperative agreement Advancing Concrete Pavement Technology Solutions.
This guide and other publications produced as part of the ongoing cooperative agreement are available at the project page. Additionally, a recent webinar focused on the topic is available on the CP Tech Center’s Webinars and Videos page.