Green Cement is Carbon Neutral, Sequesters CO2 from Power Plants

New ideas for reducing CO2 seem to be popping up all the time. The latest scheme for getting rid of the greenhouse gas comes from Stanford Professor Brent Constanz. The Geological and Environmental Sciences Professor has invented a new type of cement that is carbon neutral—a huge innovation for a material whose production process normally spews vast amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere.

Not only is Constanz’s cement carbon neutral, but it also sequesters CO2 emitted from power plants.

The details of the cement process are secret until it is patented, but Constanz reveals that it does eliminate the need to heat limestone, a major source of CO2 emissions.

In Constanz’s vision, the green cement factories are built next to power plants, and exhaust gas released from the power plants is bubbled through seawater. The resulting chemical process creates an important ingredient for the cement. It also sequesters a half ton of CO2 from the smokestacks for every ton of cement produced.

And the green cement will even be cost-effective—$100 a ton versus $110 for standard Portland cement.

If green cement goes mainstream, it will drastically reduce CO2 levels, as the cement manufacturing process currently produces 5 percent of the world’s CO2 emissions.

The faster green cement replaces regular cement, the better for our planet’s health.

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