Sustainable Building Materials

The following product innovations help to improve the sustainability of buildings and other structures:

Insulating concrete forms, made primarily from polystyrene and filled with concrete to help keep heat out in hot climates and to retain it in cold weather.

Self-compacting concrete, which has a dense formulation, improves the strength, durability, and life of a structure, while reducing labor costs, energy use, and health risks during construction and maintenance costs throughout its life.

Pervious concrete, which allows rainwater to filter through, reduces flooding and heat concentration by up to 4°C, and helps to prevent skidding on wet roads.

Rapid-setting concrete, which contains up to 80% fly ash, is a low-carbon alternative to conventional concrete. Concrete with high acid resistance is robust and durable for uses such as cooling towers or for storing silage on livestock farms.

Antibacterial concrete, which controls bacteria growth, is used to help maintain clean environments in structures such as hospitals, laboratories, and farms.

We are exploring ways to combine our existing products to deliver new solutions that meet client needs. We are looking beyond the traditional technical properties of concrete to develop “next generation” ready-mix concrete products that incorporate labor considerations such as time savings, health, and safety, as well as other environmental impacts such as noise reduction. These innovations will enable us to make new products and solutions more accessible to our clients.

In addition, we are evaluating and improving the life-cycle analysis of our products to enhance our understanding of and ultimately reduce their environmental footprint. A specific example is the LCA of concrete pavements vs. asphalt pavements that demonstrate the reduction of CO2 emissions during the life utility of the pavement by several factors, for example: less maintenance, less power consumption in illumination during its use, and less fuel consumption due the reduction or rolling resistance.

Our building materials, ready-mix concrete in particular, can help customers reduce the environmental impacts of their buildings and meet the requirements of existing certifications, such as Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) in the United States, Haute Qualité Environnementale (HQE) in France, Energy Pass in Germany, and the Comisión Nacional de Vivienda (CONAVI) in Mexico.

In the USA, CEMEX has been actively involved with other industry players in the establishment of the Concrete Sustainability Hub at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). We are encouraged by the first report published by MIT and expect both more information on the sustainability attributes of concrete as well as technical innovations that will result in additional benefits to the industry and society at large.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) released preliminary research findings that will help set a new standard in life-cycle assessment (LCA) modeling. The studies, which are part of the ongoing research initiative, will quantify the cradle-to-grave environmental costs of paving and building materials, and will ultimately result in the most comprehensive LCA model produced to-date.

Initial findings in the Buildings LCA have shown that more than 90 percent of the life-cycle carbon emissions from residential buildings are due to the use or operational phase. The study also showed that in residential structures, the use of insulating concrete forms instead of code compliant wood-framed construction can produce operational energy savings of 20 percent or more, with the highest energy savings occurring in colder climates.

The Highway Pavement LCA showed that for high-volume roads, the use phase of the lifecycle can account for up to 85 percent of total carbon emissions. MIT is set to release a follow-up study in 2011 that will examine the economic costs to provide the most comprehensive analysis of the total costs of building and paving materials.

A key to building more sustainable buildings and cities is greater transparency about the materials and techniques used for construction. In 2012, CEMEX launched Ecoperating to aid the construction industry in identifying the most sustainable products, services, solutions and initiatives in our portfolio.

Ecoperating is a unique seal developed through a rigorous internal process that uses a methodology based on global standards to measure the environmental and social impact of our offerings.

CEMEX products and building solutions with the Ecoperating seal help builders optimize the performance of projects by reducing their ecological footprint or providing particular in-use characteristics that reduce the environmental impact of projects, optimizing the use of natural resources and reducing emissions and waste generation.

The criteria for a product to achieve the Ecoperating label are specific to the product group with multiple criteria required for securing the seal.