Source: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass.

To accelerate concrete science and engineering breakthroughs and their transfer to commercial practice, the Concrete Sustainability Hub (CSH) will fund $10 million in research over the next five years, with MIT’s School of Engineering, School of Architecture and Planning, and Sloan School of Management among candidate participants. CSH has been established as an MIT research center in collaboration with the RMC Research & Education Foundation, Silver Spring, Md., and Portland Cement Association, Skokie, Ill.

The groups see CSH research findings potentially easing the way for industry to meet regulatory changes emanating from Environmental Protection Agency measures to curtail greenhouse gas emissions from large industrial sources, almost certainly to include the 118 U.S. cement mills. Research initially will be organized around concrete materials science, building technology and the econometrics of sustainable development. The first two projects, “Green Concrete Science,” and “The Edge of Concrete: A Life-Cycle Investigation of Concrete and Concrete Structures” are under way.

“The concrete industry has the honor of producing the world’s most favored building material, but this honor comes with a responsibility to minimize its ecological footprint,” says RMC Research Executive Director Julie Garbini

“The MIT research team is an exceptional group of dedicated interdisciplinary faculty, and the CSH will take a holistic approach to research that allows science to feed seamlessly into today’s concrete applications like paving and wall systems,” adds PCA President Brian McCarthy. “Ultimately, the greatest opportunity for the building industry to reduce greenhouse gas emissions may lay in the development of more durable and energy-efficient roads, houses, and buildings.”