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The Smart Surfaces Coalition, CSA Group, the World Cement Association, and the American Public Health Association announced the introduction of CarbonStar, a new binational standard to quantify the carbon impact of concrete. CarbonStar [CSA/ANSI R118:2024, CarbonStar: Concrete Carbon Intensity Quantification and Verification] provides a simple, rigorous way to compare the embodied carbon in concrete. Concrete is the most-used building material on the planet and is responsible for eight per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions.
“CarbonStar is the only binational standard for the quantification and verification of the carbon intensity in concrete,” said Greg Kats, CEO of the Smart Surfaces Coalition. “We are working with cities that make up more than 10 per cent of the US population, and our city partners all want to cut pollution and become more resilient. CarbonStar is essential because it is the first user-friendly standard enabling cities to effectively quantify and decarbonize their concrete.”
Developed by consensus with leading industry, government, academic, and other experts working together since 2020, CarbonStar is an official American and Canadian standard that is compliant with both the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and the Standards Council of Canada accreditation requirements.
“The publication of the CarbonStar standard provides a way for project owners to quantify and specify carbon intensity of concrete,” said Ian Riley, CEO of the World Cement Association. It offers stakeholders a comprehensive guide to utilizing low-carbon and carbon-sequestering concrete materials, placing sustainability at the forefront of development. “This is an important step forward for the construction and concrete industries,” Riley said.
“Successful climate-change mitigation and carbon sequestration requires rigorous consensus standards. CarbonStar provides this for the essential effort of decarbonizing concrete,” said Sarah Saltzer, who served on the standard development committee and is managing director of the Stanford Center for Carbon Storage within the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability.
Establishing a universal approach for calculating the carbon intensity of concrete enables consistent carbon quantification of various concrete products, regardless of their production methods or materials. That’s why the San Francisco International Airport (SFO) has already started using CarbonStar as a core part of its $11 billion infrastructure upgrade project. “CarbonStar provides design, construction, and concrete manufacturing professionals with the ability to specify low embodied carbon concrete mixes as they address their building projects’ approach to reducing impacts on climate change,” said Anthony Bernheim, SFO Healthy and Resilient Buildings Program Manager. “SFO is using CarbonStar for its infrastructure upgrade because it is a rigorous and relatively simple method to measure the carbon intensity of concrete.”
The CarbonStar standards committee included representatives from the General Services Administration, which manages most US federal buildings, the Department of General Services, which oversees California’s public buildings, and other technical experts from both the United States and Canada, including major building owners. CarbonStar is modeled on Energy Star.
Leading health advocates support the new standard. “CarbonStar is already enabling innovation that addresses not just global warming, but other health-damaging pollution as well. As the leading voice for public health in the United States, the American Public Health Association (APHA) is keenly aware of the enormous health costs of climate change, which disproportionately burden the most climate-sensitive populations,” said Dr. Georges C. Benjamin, MD, Executive Director of the American Public Health Association.
CarbonStar includes a calculator, allowing users to directly assess the embodied carbon in concrete. The CarbonStar standard and calculator support existing marketplace products–including Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs)–to help provide consistent and rigorous quantification of the carbon impacts of various forms of concrete and concrete mixes. |
