In the weekly column we alternately write about innovation and economic trends in Asia.
(Photo: Klawe Rzeczy)
Tokyo Concrete fans will get their money’s worth on the homepage of the Japanese Breakwater Association. More than 80 different forms of solid concrete blocks, which have been tipped over for decades to protect the coast from beaches and quay walls, are described in detail. The neatly stacked tetrapods are part of a beach holiday in Japan, just like the sandy beach – for good reason for the industrial lobby.
“It is necessary to prepare for the threats to nature, which are becoming increasingly severe due to global warming,” explain the manufacturers. They praise the “excellent disaster-preventing function of wave-distributing cement blocks”. But if it is up to the government in Tokyo, they will soon be actively contributing to climate protection.
So far, concrete has had a reputation for being one of the biggest drivers of climate change. According to estimates, global cement production is responsible for eight percent of carbon dioxide emissions. But the Japanese government demonstrates at the climate conference in Glasgow how it wants to turn cement from a problem into part of the solution.
In its pavilion, the state is promoting 32 domestic technologies for capturing, using and storing carbon dioxide (CCUS). And one, according to the Ministry of Economic Affairs, is the “world’s first commercial carbon-negative cement” that removes CO2 from the environment instead of emitting it.
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The construction company Kajima calls the product “CO2 Suicom”. He developed it with the power company Chugoku Electric, the building materials manufacturer Denka and the trading house Mitsubishi, which is responsible for global sales.
The idea: exhaust gases from coal-fired power plants of the regional electricity supplier or from other major polluters such as the steel industry are bound in the concrete. At the same time, blast furnace slag and other industrial waste products are used to reduce the use of conventional limestone, which has to be heated to a high temperature.
In the future, the tetrapods will not only serve to protect the coast, but also to combat climate change.
(Photo: AP)
The partners promise that 288 kilograms of carbon dioxide will no longer be blown into the atmosphere per cubic meter of this concrete, but that the bottom line will be that 18 kilograms will be permanently trapped in the building material. And that’s not even a Japanese high.
This year, Kajima’s competitor Taisei presented his “T-eConcrete”, which can remove 55 kilograms of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere with every cubic meter of earth that is concreted over. But the developers estimate that the product will not be ready for the market until 2030.
Concrete promotion as industrial policy
The Japanese construction companies are not alone worldwide in their attempts to defuse the climate bomb, concrete. Most start-ups everywhere are trying to produce cement with less carbon dioxide or to develop CO2-negative products. In Japan, it is large corporations that drive development.
Cement production in the country has almost halved in the past 20 years from almost 100 million tons per year. This means that Japan has fallen back to tenth place among the largest manufacturers, far behind China, India and Vietnam. But the corporations continue to benefit from the construction and materials technologies they developed during the Japanese construction boom.
The government is building on innovative strength in order to increase global competitiveness with its climate protection policy. Hiroshi Tsuchiya from the Ministry of Economic Affairs explains the idea: “Carbon recycling is a key technology for realizing a CO2-neutral society that also uses carbon dioxide as a raw material.” Japan has a competitive advantage in this area.
This year alone, the government is funding CCUS technologies with the equivalent of around 400 million euros. Japan is not only campaigning worldwide under the slogan “Different paths for the path to climate neutrality” not to demonize the use of fossil fuels. But they should burn cleaner in the future, preferably with CCUS technologies made in Japan.
Regardless of these advances, concrete also has an aesthetic and ecological benefit in the eyes of the breakwater association. Under the heading “Amazing”, he advertises on his homepage how concrete structures cast in large series can be painted or illuminated and transformed into art. In addition, the concrete walls gave plants and fish a new home underwater. Apparently, manufacturers continue to believe that concrete has a higher mission than “to help improve people’s lives”.
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