Sustainability Series 2022

The Concrete Centre is pleased to announce that the Sustainability Series is back for 2022, building on the success and feedback from previous years.

The series aims to share best practice, recent and planned activity, and new evolving guidance to support the collaboration, learning and behaviour change necessary to accelerate progress towards a net zero built environment.  

Over the course of six weeks there will be weekly live, online events featuring guest speakers, as well as a range of new and existing on-demand resources grouped into themes including low carbon concretes, material efficiency, energy efficiency and progress on carbon capture. 

The series' events and resources are free to attend and download, and intended to assist construction professionals and students from across the design and construction community make informed decisions to reduce the whole life carbon of projects using concrete. 

Week 1 (10 October): Launch

The Sustainability Series launched with a hugely successful networking event, with over 140 attendees, held at the Royal College of Pathologists HQ, in London. At this event, clients representing housing, commercial and infrastructure development delivered presentations and discussed recent activity around getting closer to net zero using concrete. 

Week 2 (w/c 17 October): Lean design

Material efficiency is key to delivering low carbon concrete structures and our lean design event will showcase innovative and efficient uses of concrete. During the week, we will also highlight the resources available from The Concrete Centre to enable designers to cut carbon from their designs, including tools enabling comparison of different framing options and guidance on using concrete to do more with less.

Event: Lean and material efficient design webinar, recorded and delivered live on 20 October. A recording is available here.

Week 3 (w/c 24 October): Energy

With electrical capacity being squeezed and unprecedented energy prices, the need to maximise the fabric energy efficiency of buildings has never been more important. Our live event will showcase techniques and approaches adopted in recent exemplars of low energy homes, and consider the impacts on design and detailing to meet and exceed new building regulation requirements. Existing and new resources for making the best use of concrete and masonry in delivering comfortable, low energy buildings will also be covered.

Event: Energy efficient homes: some contemporary solutions webinar, recorded and delivered live on 25 October. A recording is available here. 

Week 4 (w/c 31 October): Roadmap to decarbonise cement and concrete 

This week will focus on the UK Concrete and Cement Industry Roadmap to Net Zero and look at the actions taken to date that have helped the sector achieve a 53% reduction in emissions since 1990. This includes the development of low carbon cements and concretes and fuel switching.

Live event: Carbon capture in cement sector webinar, recorded and delivered live on 2 November. A recording is available here. 

Week 5 (w/c 7 November): Low carbon concrete

In this week we will explore the existing and evolving opportunities to reduce the embodied carbon of concrete through specification and mix design. This will include consideration of cement content and type, early strength gain and use of admixtures and an update on the development of standards to expand the availability of low carbon cement options include use of limestone and calcined clay. 

Live event: Delivering real carbon reductions within the standards recorded and delivered live on 8 November. A recording is available here. 

Week 6 (w/c 14 November): Concrete products

Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) using concrete provide both efficiency and programme benefits in construction, combined with inherent performance in use. This includes longevity, material efficiency and non-combustibility, as well as climate change resilience through passive cooling and flood resilience. This week will explore some of the current concrete MMC solutions available, and resources to help identify the best sustainable solutions. As well as evolving and innovative solutions in manufacture and design to support a more circular and low carbon economy.

Live events:

  • Low Carbon Precast Concrete and Masonry, Monday 14 November. A recording of this webinar is available to watch on demand.
  • High Performance Masonry Housing, Wednesday 16 November. A recording of this webinar is available to watch on demand.
  • Precast Concrete - Durability, resilience and circular economy, Friday 18 November. A recording of this webinar is available to watch on demand.

Specifying Sustainable Concrete

Using 56 Day Concrete Strengths