the owners of a building in New York try the unprecedented solution of injecting their CO2 into concrete

In the United States, to fight against the enormous pollution emitted by the skyscrapers of the metropolis of New York, the owners of one of the many towers of Manhattan have implemented an unprecedented solution. The building in question, the “Grand Tier building” is 30 stories high and is located in the posh Upper West Side. Like all large residential buildings, a good part of the pollution emitted comes from the gigantic gas burners intended to heat the apartments. Its owners therefore called on a company called “Carbon Quest” to capture some of the CO2 released.

To do this, pipes now capture up to 60% of this carbon dioxide at the source, which is then cooled and then liquefied and transported to a cement plant in Brooklyn. This material is then transformed into a kind of powder which is mixed with cement to make concrete blocks. The CO2 is then stuck and it can no longer contribute to global warming, these blocks allow you to build other buildings.

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Heavy fine and temporary solution

The metropolis wants to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from these buildings by 40% by 2030 and by 80% by 2050. As of next year, increasing fines are provided for by a new environmental law. The owners of the “Grand Tier building” thus risk having to pay 100,000 dollars per year from 2024 and 400,000 in ten years. The advantage of this law is that it has made New York a kind of laboratory for innovation by forcing donors to act. We are in the most populated city in the country, the city of skyscrapers, since a hundred towers in New York are 200 meters or more.

But the effectiveness of this method remains to be proven. We have to find cement works, construction companies, ready to inject CO2 into their concrete blocks. It is also undoubtedly a last resort for the owners of the “Grand Tier Building”, a temporary solution, intended not to pay a fine in the near future. The new New York law seeks above all to encourage the abandonment of fossil fuels in favor of all-electric, but the costs and logistics are enormous. For the moment, this way of capturing CO2 in the masonry is a “bridge”, say the donors of the “Grand Tier Buildng” while waiting for better.