Stanford Energy Seminar: Karen Scrivener | Realistic Strategies for Decarbonizing Construction

The Stanford Energy Seminar has been a mainstay of energy engagement at Stanford for nearly 20 years and is one of the flagship programs of the Precourt Institute for Energy.

Talk abstract: “Construction” contributes around 20% of human related GHGs every year. This is from the embodied emissions of materials, the transportation and construction processes. These embodied emissions occur mainly “upfront” before the building or infrastructure is even in use and is then effectively “locked in”. This means it has become the most important part of emission from buildings and infrastructure in the coming decades, especially in light of the climate emergency we are facing. Furthermore, most new construction (about 80%) in the next 25 years will occur in the global south. In the light of this background, I will talk about strategies which have a realistic prospect to reduce emission fast and at scale. Large scale reduction can be made, even with existing technologies, especially if these are deployed in combination. LC3, limestone calcined clay cement stands out for the scale and comparative ease with which it can be implemented, but even here we have an uphill struggle due to lack of incentives. Nevertheless I feel now the tide is turning and we need to think how we can accelerate this process in the future.

Speaker Bio: Karen Scrivener is Professor of construction materials at EPFL Switzerland. A Materials Scientist by training, she has more than 40 year’s experience of research in the field of cement and concrete. She has more than 250 journal publication and was made a fellow of the UK Royal Society of Engineering in 2014. She is also a member of the UN Council of Engineers for the Energy Transition (CEET) and the “10 Member Group” overseeing the UN STI mechanisms. She is the inventor of LC3 (limestone calcined clay cement) which has the potential to save around 40% of CO2 compared to conventional cement.

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