Concrete – the huge opportunities for decarbonisation that the government has missed

Originally published in The Fifth Estate

Without determined action, embodied carbon will soon balloon to 85 per cent of the built environment’s emissions.

Yet, the federal budget handed down this week had little support for the industry to decarbonise, despite its support for renewable energy and the government’s continued decarbonisation targets.

In a recent interview, SmartCrete CRC’s chief executive, Clare Tubolets, sounded the alarm.

With the CRC she runs slated to conclude next year, she told The Fifth Estate that there are still very few plans to adopt any of its research into government procurement policies, which are well known to be able to kick forward market transformation.

Also, absent are any commitments to fight regulatory barriers that innovative businesses face when commercialising low carbon concrete.

Tubolets says the CRC she runs has invested around $74 million into technical research on a portfolio of projects. But what’s emerged is that the big challenges are not technical.

“We know how to decarbonise concrete,” she says. In fact, “this industry is really good at solving all the technical issues”.

Rather, what’s lacking is support for getting products commercialised.

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