Cement Based Materials: Reaching Net Zero

The aim of the conference is to encourage communication and discussion of ideas and new unpublished results at the very frontier of a particular field of research, by bringing together outstanding scientists from academia, industry, and government, from senior to PhD level. There is more concrete produced each year than all other materials put together, for this reason alone it accounts for around 8% of anthropogenic CO2 emissions and if a country would come third after China and the USA. However on a per unit basis it is one of the materials with the lowest environmental footprint. Most major cement producers have signaled their intention to make concrete carbon neutral by 2050. In this conference we will debate the scientific challenges behind this ambition. It is now widely accepted that to meet this challenge, work is needed at all steps in the production and use process: Clinker, Cement, Concrete, Construction, Carbonation, Circular economy. Developing scalable solutions from existing/waste resources needs to be supplemented by a scientific approach to process these materials for use in cementitious materials. Tailoring a wide range of solutions for emission control at the scale of cement, concrete and reinforced concrete is necessary. Low carbon cement should be facilitated by efficient use of cement in concrete and enhancing durability performance of concrete structures in an aggressive environment. The different sessions will each focus on different parts of the value chain and aim to bring together thinking from both academic and industrial perspectives and from both materials and structural view points.