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UGC in a nutshell

A new generation of concrete formulations with substantially reduced CO2 footprints and equivalent performance.

Vision

UGC will enable to sustain the development of emerging economies at a considerably lower environmental cost.

Reduce2

UGC is founded on its two-fold strategy: reduce clinker in cement and simultaneosuly  reduce cement in concrete.

Decarbonising the cement and concrete industry

Ultra green concrete (UGC) puts the focus back into concrete with its innovative two-fold strategy to reduce de embodied carbon per cubic meter of material, potentially enabling to save at least 800 million tons of CO2 per year, equivalent to 2% of the total anthropogenic carbon emissions.

Why a technology like UGC is needed?

Portland cement (PC), a combination of clinker (95%) and gypsum (5%), is the product manufactured in largest on a mass basis, and it is the binder used to produce concrete. Concrete is the second most used substance by mankind after water. Due to this enormous utilisation, PC is responsible for about 8% of manmade CO2 emissions. Given the scale of consumption, there are no other materials available in in the quantities that would be needed to replace a large proportion of concrete, making the endeavour to reduce the embodied CO2 in concrete an essential task. On the one hand we need concrete to sustain the development of civil infrastructure, particularly in emerging economies, but on the other hand our future is founded on our ability to preserve our environmental integrity. Blended cements opened new avenues in this regard by reducing the amount of clinker in cement. The UGC project aims to take this even further with its innovative two-fold strategy.

A pathway paved with limestone, calcined clays and chemical admixtures

An important conceptualisation that helps understanding the UGC principles is to visualise construction as a volumetric process: if something is removed, something else needs to take its place.

Blended cements enable to reduce the embodied CO2 of concrete by replacing part of the carbon-intensive clinker with mineral additions. However, to do this at a worldwide scale, abundant sources of such SCMs are needed. Calcined clays and limestone are available in virtually unlimited quantities, and therefore technologies such as LC3 have great potential for scalability.

In addition to the use of blended cements, UGC aims to reduce the total cement content per cubic meter of concrete. This in turn implies increasing the volume of aggregates, and the need to compensate the workability loss with high performance superplasticizers. Hence, chemical admixtures are a cornerstone in the development of the next generation of environmentally friendly concrete formulations.

 

Ultra-green concrete (UGC)

The pathway to save 800 Mt of CO2 per year

The UGC project aims at developing a new family of concretes (UGC: ultra-green concrete) to radically reduce the CO2 emissions related to this fundamental material for mankind, substantially beyond the CO2 savings of any of the technologies currently available. UGC will therefore be the next breakthrough in sustainable technologies for decarbonization of the construction industry, saving at least 800 Mt of CO2 per year, equivalent to 2% of the total anthropogenic carbon emissions or 20 times the total carbon emissions of Switzerland (20% of the EU emissions).