Business View Magazine l November 2022

15 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 9, ISSUE 11 DOE AWARDS $39M FOR TECH THAT WOULD ENABLE BUILDINGS TO STORE CARBON Dive Brief: • The U.S. Department of Energy announced $39 million in awards for 18 projects that are developing technologies to transform buildings into net carbon storage structures. • Several of these awards consist of alternative concrete and cement materials, as part of the DOE push to improve energy efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, said Marina Sofos, program director at the DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy. • The direct CO2 intensity of cement production increased 1.8% per year during 2015 to 2020, according to an International Energy Agency report, while a 3% yearly decline to 2030 is needed to get on track with its Net Zero Emissions by 2050 goal to mitigate the worst effects of climate change. Dive Insight: The built environment generates nearly half of annual global CO2 emissions, according to 2030 Architecture, a commercial organization created to address contributors to greenhouse gas emissions. Building operations are responsible for 27% of those emissions annually, while building materials and construction, or embodied carbon, are responsible for an additional 20% annually. Embodied carbon emissions are locked in primarily at the start of the building’s lifetime, said Sofos. The program aims to make a dent in embodied carbon emissions, said U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm in the DOE press release. “There’s huge, untapped potential in reimagining building materials and construction techniques as carbon sinks,” Granholm said. The DOE awards will help meet the goal of net zero emissions by 2050, an executive order signed by President Joe Biden late last year to OPENING L INES