Cement is a crucial, strategic component for the construction sector. However, considerable efforts still need to be conducted to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 for cementitious materials. A new project has been launched to achieve this goal, with the aim of gathering the necessary information, identifying promising new solutions, and shaping future standards.
It is necessary to identify new pathways for the decarbonization of cements and to increase circular economy solutions that can be introduced in standardization. As this topic is one of the priorities of the EU Standardization Strategy, it has to be dealt with as quickly as possible. Beyond the recent standards developed by CEN/TC51 in support of these objectives, it is first and foremost crucial to collect all useful technical data and expertise to create a reliable, robust technical dossier, in which the interest in new promising materials and products has been scientifically demonstrated.
The new project sets out to create a platform to collaborate and exchange the useful know-how and information on key topics between stakeholders to facilitate the standardization of proven sustainable cements. This also serves the purpose of connecting scientists, who have the technical knowledge, and standardization experts, who know all about how standardization works. In addition, the project aims to identify new solutions and to standardize the most promising solutions, to offer new sustainable products on the Single Market, in the interest of European citizens.
The project is a holistic approach structured around three Work Packages (WP), in addition to WP1 dealing with project management and coordination:
- WP2 deals with cooperation to identify promising new constituents for cements, hydraulic binders, and building limes;
- WP3 is about cooperation to further investigate materials coming from Construction and Demolition Wastes to be used as new constituents;
- WP4 centres around the development of an approach to facilitate harmonization and the introduction of new or revised products’ standards in application standards (like concrete standard) across Europe.
There is no single solution at the European level, therefore it is important to investigate all these possibilities to work towards the goal of carbon neutrality by 2050.
Want to know more about, please find the descriptive summary and the final goals of the SuStaCEM project.
For more information contact: sustacem@cric-occn.be
