
Cement-free concrete products manufactured by Patio Drummond can be purchased through Gagne & Son, the Maine-based market leader in concrete and hardscapes
Montreal, January 23, 2025 – CarbiCrete, a leading firm in the decarbonization of concrete, announced today that its CarbiFlo grid pavers, produced by hardscape manufacturer Patio Drummond, are now available for purchase in the U.S. through Gagne & Son, a Maine-based manufacturer-supplier, dealer, and retailer of concrete products.
CarbiCrete’s patented technology enables the production of cement-free concrete, avoiding cement-related emissions by replacing cement with a steel-making by-product and removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by mineralizing CO2 into the concrete for permanent storage.
CarbiFlo cement-free pavers have additional sustainability benefits in that they allow water to flow into turf or aggregate-filled voids, providing an ideal solution for stormwater runoff, erosion control, soil stabilization, and flood prevention.
“We are very excited to expand our market presence into the US—a key market for CarbiCrete,” says Jacob Homiller, CarbiCrete’s CEO. “This marks a significant milestone in our efforts help decarbonize the built environment, and we look forward to working with Gagne & Son to bring more CarbiCrete products to market in order to meet the growing demand for low-carbon concrete.”
“At Gagne & Son, we are committed to providing innovative and sustainable solutions to our customers,” said Bruce Goodrich, COO of Gagne & Son. “We are excited to support our partner Patio Drummond in bringing CarbiFlo pavers and CarbiCrete CMUs to the U.S. market, and we look forward to our continued collaboration with CarbiCrete.”
CarbiCrete has made a series of annoucements in recent months around the increased production of its products. On December 12, the company announced a new carbon financing collaboration with Meta to enable the expansion of Patio Drummond’s production capacity as well as the installation of CarbiCrete equipment at Canal Block, a block-maker in Port Colborne, Ontario.
About CarbiCrete
CarbiCrete is a Montreal-based carbon removal technology company whose patented technology enables the production of cement-free, decarbonized concrete made with industrial by-products and captured carbon dioxide. CarbiCrete.com
About Gagne & Son
Founded in 1945, Gagne & Son is Maine’s leading manufacturer, supplier, and retailer of concrete and hardscape products. With a strong commitment to quality and innovation, Gagne & Son serves a wide range of customers, including homeowners, contractors, municipalities, and businesses. Offering an extensive product line and exceptional service, Gagne & Son is dedicated to helping customers create enduring, functional, and beautiful projects. Learn more at gagneandson.com
About Patio Drummond
Patio Drummond is a leading manufacturer of concrete products for landscaping, urban furniture, precast concrete and agricultural products. Its team of more than 120 people serves a clientele of renovation centres, general contractors, landscaping professionals, municipalities and government ministries in Quebec, Ontario and the United States. Patiodrummond.com
Media Contact:
CarbiCrete
Yuri Mytko
yuri.mytko@Carbicrete.com

As the built environment continues to grow and change with our societal needs, the environmental impact of construction projects must be considered to ensure sustainable infrastructure growth. One way to demonstrate a building project’s environmental impact is through certifications, the foremost of which is Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification.
In order to achieve LEED certification, a construction project must abide by certain criteria meant to standardize the quantification and reduction of a project’s overall environmental impact. The LEED system, as regulated by the United States Green Building Council (USGBC) and Canada Green Building Council (CAGBC), has evolved through several versions since its inception in the 1990s.
LEED v5, the newest version of LEED’s guidelines, went through two rounds of public comment in 2024 and is expected to open for registration in early 2025. When developing LEED v5, three central impact areas were prioritized: decarbonization, quality of life, and ecological conservation and restoration. As a result, the forthcoming LEED v5 guidelines are some of the most far-reaching yet, promising to deliver on sustainability and innovation.
The priority areas of LEED v5 are echoed in updated prerequisites and credits. One notable area of improvement when comparing LEED v5 to its predecessor is the inclusion of embodied carbon as a major sustainability quantifier. Material selection is now codified in a new Materials and Resources prerequisite, as well as an embodied carbon-focused credit.
The “Assess and Quantify Embodied Carbon” prerequisite has been developed as part of LEED v5 to encourage the assessment and quantification of the materials used in the project. The goal of this assessment is to encourage the knowledge and reduction of embodied carbon, the carbon dioxide emissions that result from the manufacturing and processing of building materials.
The “Reduce Embodied Carbon” credit is a new addition to the credit to the LEED v5 credit library. With up to six points available, embodied carbon is given significant weight in the new LEED system. This credit utilizes global warming potential (GWP) as quantified in environmental product declarations (EPDs) to quantify the environmental impact of the materials used in a new construction project.
CarbiCrete’s innovative technology enables the production of concrete products without using cement. The products utilize an industrial byproduct, steel slag, as a binding agent and are cured via carbon mineralization, leading to the permanent sequestration of CO2 within the end-product. This combination of emissions avoidance and carbon dioxide removal, when quantified in an EPD, reduces the GWP of a concrete masonry units (CMU) by over 90%, to just 11.7 kg CO2e per m3 of concrete. Compared to CarbiCrete’s impact toward achieving LEED v4.1 certification, CarbiCrete can make an even greater impact under the LEED v5 framework.
One of the requirements that must be complied with to receive points under the new “Reduce Embodied Carbon” credit is the identification and reduction of the top sources of embodied carbon predicted in the project. With cement-based concrete often serving as a major emissions source in new construction projects, incorporating new technologies like CarbiCrete’s is one way to achieve the six possible points in this credit and work toward LEED certification of a project under the updated requirements of the v5 framework.

Additional equipment has been installed at Patio Drummond to manufacture more decarbonized concrete products.
Montreal, December 19, 2024 – CarbiCrete, a leading firm in the decarbonization of concrete, announced today that the installation of new equipment at a plant in Drummondville Quebec, operated by hardscape manufacturer Patio Drummond, has been completed. This will enable Patio Drummond to increase production of CarbiCrete products.
CarbiCrete’s patented technology enables the production of cement-free concrete, avoiding cement-related emissions by replacing cement with a steel-making by-product and removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by mineralizing CO2 into the concrete for permanent storage.
A recently published Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) shows that concrete blocks made with CarbiCrete technology have a carbon footprint that is 20 times lower than the industry average.
On December 12, CarbiCrete announced a new carbon financing collaboration with Meta that will enable both this expansion as well as the installation of CarbiCrete equipment at Canal Block, a block-maker in Port Colborne, Ontario.
“This increased production capacity represents another significant step in our ability to meet the growing demand for low-carbon concrete products,” says Jacob Homiller. “It enables our long-standing production partner, Patio Drummond, to expand its portfolio of CarbiCrete products and to manufacture more concrete that will help decarbonize the built environment.”
“We are thrilled to be able to bring more CarbiCrete products to the market,” says Philippe Girardin, co-owner of Patio Drummond. “This additional capacity will help Patio Drummond set the standard for sustainable construction in Quebec and Canada. We’re proud to be working with CarbiCrete and look further to even further expansion at facility in the future.”
The first structure to be constructed using CarbiCrete blocks produced at Patio Drummond is a low-carbon building at Aecon’s Innovation and Training Centre in Holland Landing, Ontario, inaugurated on December 6.
About CarbiCrete
CarbiCrete is a Montreal-based carbon removal technology company whose patented technology enables the production of cement-free, decarbonized concrete made with industrial by-products and captured carbon dioxide. CarbiCrete.com
About Patio Drummond
Patio Drummond is a leading manufacturer of concrete products for landscaping, urban furniture, precast concrete and agricultural products. Its team of more than 120 people serves a clientele of renovation centres, general contractors, landscaping professionals, municipalities and government ministries in Quebec, Ontario and the United States. Patiodrummond.com
Media Contact:
CarbiCrete
Yuri Mytko
yuri.mytko@Carbicrete.com

Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) are quickly becoming an essential part of the building design and construction processes. In 2024, CarbiCrete and Climate Earth, a leader in construction industry EPDs, developed a site-specific EPD for CarbiCrete’s pilot commercial production of cement-free concrete products at Patio Drummond.
Chris Erickson, the CEO of EPD leader Climate Earth, discussed the history of EPDs in Concrete Products magazine. Erickson notes that, in addition to US federal promoting the use of low-embodied carbon concrete verified via EPD, “many cities and 35 states are now, or are in the process of, developing low carbon standards for concrete. The implications of these changes are clear. Low carbon, measured by EPDs, has become a hard purchase metric and a business imperative for any concrete producer that wishes to participate in major projects around the country. “
EPDs are crucial for both manufacturers and product users, like architects, engineers, and designers, to demonstrate the sustainability of a building project through its choice of products. For a project to obtain LEED certification or other signifiers of improved environmental performance, specifying products with available EPDs can demonstrate a verified sustainability impact. Under LEED v4.1, using products with verified EPDs can help a building project receive up to 2 LEED points.
The Canadian low-carbon assets through life cycle assessment (LCA2) initiative, led by the National Research Council, convened from 2019-2023 to develop outputs to encourage low-carbon procurement, including a centralized repository for Canadian life cycle inventory (LCI) datasets of primary construction materials. The initiative also published national guidelines for whole-building life cycle assessments to assist project owners in implementation of carbon reduction strategies.
The LCA2 initiative’s primer for federal government procurement notes that embodied carbon can contribute up to 50% of a building’s total long-term emissions, and that “at 12 years embodied carbon is ~75%, and concrete ~40%, of the total emissions.”
The primer recommends various strategies to reduce a project’s embodied carbon, particularly through optimizing the cement content in the concrete used: “the amount of embodied carbon in concrete is primarily a function of how much cement is used in the mix.” By reducing cement use in the concrete mix, a project has the opportunity to greatly reduced its embodied carbon emissions.
In future years, EPDs will see increased adoption and regulation via legislative requirements. Although projects seeking LEED certification are likely to specify products with available EPDs, this is not yet a stipulated priority for more general projects. In the United States, EPDs are required for material suppliers in states including New York, New Jersey, and California, with more states moving toward requiring verifiable reductions in embodied carbon.
When it comes to concrete, precast concrete and masonry products show a vast improvement over ready-mix concrete in terms of environmental performance. This is clear when looking at precast and ready-mix concrete’s cradle-to-gate industry-wide EPDs: per tonne, Canadian precast concrete has a weighted average total global warming potential (GWP) of 256.3 kg CO2e, while Canadian ready-mix concrete has an industry average benchmark of 304.52 kg CO2e.
Climate Earth, a leader in on-demand EPDs that produces 95% of all concrete-related EPDs in North America, has developed an EPD that measures the environmental impact of CarbiCrete’s cement-free concrete masonry units (CMUs). The cradle-to-gate facility-specific EPD was produced using data gathered onsite at Patio Drummond, a leading concrete manufacturer and CarbiCrete’s initial commercial production partner. The EPD measures the environmental impact for CarbiCrete cement-free CMUs at 11.7 kg CO2e per cubic metre.
When compared to the Canadian Concrete Masonry Producers’ Association industry-wide EPD for CMUs manufactured in Eastern Canada, CarbiCrete represents an extraordinary improvement upon masonry’s already impressive environmental impact. The CarbiCrete process allows for a complete replacement of cement with an industrial byproduct, reducing embodied carbon while contributing to the principles of the circular economy.

Montreal, December 12, 2024 – CarbiCrete, a leading firm in the decarbonization of concrete, announced today a new carbon financing collaboration with Meta that will enable the installation of CarbiCrete equipment at Canal Block, a block-maker in Ontario, and expand equipment capacity at Patio Drummond in Quebec, where CarbiCrete’s technology is currently being deployed commercially.
CarbiCrete’s patented technology enables the production of cement-free concrete, avoiding cement-related emissions by replacing cement with a steel-making by-product and removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by mineralizing CO2 into the concrete for permanent storage.
3Degrees, a leading climate solutions provider and CarbiCrete’s long term partner for assuring and monetizing emission reductions, will oversee the quantification and verification of the emissions reductions generated by CarbiCrete’s patented process for making decarbonized concrete.
“This is truly a win-win scenario,” says Jacob Homiller, CarbiCrete’s CEO. “The accelerated implementation of our technology will have an immediate impact, reducing emissions in the concrete value chain, while making cement-free concrete materials available to the construction industry. We are thrilled to be working alongside Meta and 3Degrees to decarbonize this hard-to-abate industry.”
“Decarbonizing hard-to-abate sectors like concrete is an important part of our strategy to achieve net zero emissions across our value chain in 2030,” said Devon Lake, head of net zero strategy at Meta. “Collaborating with organizations like CarbiCrete, who have meaningfully made progress in this sector, is instrumental to accelerate the implementation of this technology and drive results.”
“This work demonstrates the potential for utilizing carbon finance to drive deep supply chain decarbonization,” said Mark Mondik, Vice President, Carbon Markets at 3Degrees. “We are thrilled to leverage our technical expertise and experience in environmental markets to make this transaction a reality.”
About CarbiCrete
CarbiCrete is a Montreal-based carbon removal technology company whose patented technology enables the production of cement-free, decarbonized concrete made with industrial by-products and captured carbon dioxide. Carbicrete.com
About 3Degrees
3Degrees is a leading global climate solutions provider and Certified B Corporation. We offer impactful climate solutions that help our clients achieve their climate goals and advance an equitable transition to the low-carbon future. Learn more at 3Degrees.com or follow us on LinkedIn and X.
Media Contacts:
CarbiCrete
Yuri Mytko
yuri.mytko@Carbicrete.com
3Degrees
Rachel Fagan
rfagan@3degreesinc.com

The trial project sets a new standard for sustainable construction.
Montreal, December 10, 2024 – On December 6, Jacob Homiller, the CEO of CarbiCrete, was joined by Clément Boisselier, Aecon’s Senior Advisor, Sustainability and Environment, and Nashat Andraws, Technical Performance and Data Transformation Manager, Innocon, a subsidiary of Lafarge Canada, for a ribbon-cutting ceremony at Aecon’s Innovation and Training Centre in Holland Landing, Ontario.
The event marked the completion of the first structure to be constructed using CarbiCrete’s cement-free concrete masonry units (CMUs), produced at Patio Drummond, and Lafarge Canada’s advanced ECOpact® low-carbon concrete. The low carbon building will be used by Aecon as a tool storage facility for trainees working at the facility.
“The use of low-carbon concrete represents the single greatest opportunity to reduce embodied carbon in the built environment,” says Homiller. “We’re pleased to be collaborating with the innovative teams at Aecon and Lafarge Canada to decarbonize the construction sector.”
According to CarbiCrete’s recently published Environmental Product Declaration (EPD), their decarbonized CMUs boast a global warming potential (or carbon footprint) that is 20 times lower than the industry average.
Aecon’s project provides a valuable use case for innovative low-carbon construction solutions like CarbiCrete’s cement-free products and Lafarge Canada’s ECOPact® concrete.
“We are excited to collaborate with Lafarge and CarbiCrete in testing low-carbon concrete and cement-free concrete blocks, taking an important step toward advancing sustainability in the construction industry,” says Prabh K. Banga, Vice President, Sustainability, Aecon. “By combining our expertise, we are not only pushing the boundaries of innovation but also addressing the pressing challenges of carbon emissions in the built environment.”
“At Lafarge Canada, we’re proud to lead the way in sustainable construction by delivering innovative low-carbon building solutions to our customers,” said Andy Unger, VP, Concrete, Lafarge Canada (East). “Our collaboration with Aecon and CarbiCrete in Holland Landing, Ontario, exemplifies our commitment to our NetZero journey. Together with like-minded partners, we’re demonstrating how collective action can drive progress for people and the planet.”
With the successful completion of this trial, CarbiCrete, Aecon, and Lafarge Canada have set a new industry standard in the use of low-carbon construction products to advance sustainable practices.
In early 2025, CarbiCrete products will become commercially available in Ontario through Canal Block, a masonry producer in Port Colborne.
About CarbiCrete
CarbiCrete is a Montreal-based carbon removal technology company whose patented technology enables the production of cement-free, decarbonized concrete made with industrial by-products and captured carbon dioxide. CarbiCrete.com
About Aecon
Aecon Group Inc. is a North American construction and infrastructure development company with global experience. Aecon delivers integrated solutions to private and public-sector clients through its Construction segment in the Civil, Urban Transportation, Nuclear, Utility, and Industrial sectors, and provides project development, financing, investment, management, and operations and maintenance services through its Concessions segment. Aecon.com
About Lafarge Canada Inc.
Lafarge Canada is the largest provider of innovative and sustainable building solutions in Canada, including aggregates, cement, ready mix and precast concrete, asphalt and paving, road and civil construction. We have over 6,900 employees and 400 sites across the country, and as an affiliate of Holcim, Lafarge Canada is driven by the Group’s purpose to build progress for people and the planet.
Holcim’s 63,448 employees are on a mission to decarbonize building while improving living standards for all. We empower our customers to build better with less, with a broad range of low-carbon and circular solutions, from ECOPact® to ECOPlanet®. Through innovative systems, from Elevate’s roofing to PRB’s insulation, Holcim makes buildings more sustainable in use, driving energy efficiency and green retrofitting.
With sustainability at the core of its strategy, Holcim is on its way to becoming a net-zero company with 1.5°C targets validated by SBTi. Lafarge.ca
About Innocon Inc.
Innocon Inc., a joint venture between Lafarge Canada and Heidelberg, is the largest provider of innovative and sustainable concrete solutions in the GTA. Every day, Innocon delivers concrete to hundreds of construction projects, ranging from small house renovations to the biggest high-rise buildings in Canada. We are dedicated to continuous innovation and sustainability with the support of our joint owners, Lafarge and Heidelberg, both world leaders in the construction industry. Our products display increasing levels of technical performance and anticipate changing industry requirements.
With over 450 employees distributed around 18 sites in the GTA, our core values include respect for people and respect for our environment. We hold ourselves to the highest Health and Safety standards, ensuring that our actions today do not limit the possibilities of future generations. https://www.innocon.on.ca
Media Contacts:
CarbiCrete
Yuri Mytko
yuri.mytko@Carbicrete.com
Aecon
John Nottage
jnottage@aecon.com
Lafarge Canada Inc.
Anna Salomao
anna.salomao@lafarge.ca

A project’s embodied carbon is becoming an increasingly important metric, and choosing products with responsible environmental impacts is now an essential part of the construction process. One way to quantify the reduction of embodied carbon emissions as an architect, engineer, designer, or product manufacturer is through the use of an Environmental Product Declaration (EPD).
EPDs build off of product category rules (PCRs), generally-defined sets of rules and requirements that act as a guide for developing Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) and EPDs. EPDs are often defined in terms of type I: environmental labelling according to general environmental compatibility of products, type II: self-declared environmental claims, and type III: third-party verified environmental declarations. These type III EPDs are widely considered to be the most thorough and reliable, and are the standard for providing an EPD.
EPDs are comprehensive, standardized, and third-party verified— creating a solid base for product comparison on common terms. An EPD quantifies a product’s environmental impact in terms of various environmental indicators, like ozone depletion potential, acidification potential, and global warming potential (GWP), as well as energy consumption, material resources consumption, and waste generated. For the construction industry, EPDs are quickly becoming a required part of the planning process.
EPDs can be distinguished by their specificity and scope. An industry-wide EPD measures the impacts of a type of product, like this industry-wide EPD of normal-weight concrete masonry unit (CMU) products as manufactured by Canadian Concrete Masonry Producers Association (CCMPA) members, including data from multiple manufacturers within a geographic region. A product-specific EPD measures impacts for a specific product, including data from multiple facilities operating under one manufacturer. The most precise EPD is facility-specific, measuring the impact of a specific product from a single manufacturer, using the unique data points of one facility.
Similarly, the scope of an EPD can be made broader or narrower to fit certain requirements, much like a life cycle assessment (LCA). A cradle-to-gate EPD, the most common variety, covers a product’s environmental impact from raw material extraction through manufacturing. The material input of a product is a crucial factor of an EPD; this comprehensive disclosure is essential for transparency and impartial product comparison across the industry.
CarbiCrete set out to create a facility and product-specific EPD for its cement-free concrete masonry units (CMUs) produced by CarbiCrete’s production partner, concrete manufacturer Patio Drummond, in 2024. This EPD was developed by Climate Earth, the leading provider of EPDs in the concrete industry. The second part of this blog will discuss CarbiCrete’s EPD results, and this EPD’s massive reduction compared to the industry standard.

The EPD sets a new standard for concrete, showing a 20 times lower Global Warming Potential than the industry average
Montreal, November 19, 2024 – CarbiCrete, a leader in decarbonized concrete, and Climate Earth, the leading provider of Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) in the concrete industry, have released the first-ever EPD for CarbiCrete’s cement-free concrete masonry units (CMUs). The announcement was made at the Concrete Masonry and Hardscapes Association’s Canadian Hardscapes Activities Meeting in Montreal.
CarbiCrete’s patented technology enables the production of cement-free concrete, avoiding cement-related emissions and removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by replacing cement with a steel-making by-product and mineralizing CO2 into the concrete for permanent storage.
Verified by ASTM under Concrete Masonry and Segmental Concrete Paving Product EPD Requirements, the EPD reveals that CarbiCrete CMUs, produced by Quebec-based hardscape manufacturer Patio Drummond, boast a Global Warming Potential (GWP) of 11.7 kg CO2 eq per cubic metre of concrete—20 times lower than the industry average of over 200—establishing a new benchmark for the industry in low-carbon concrete solutions.
The plant and product-specific EPD helps architects, engineers, and builders achieve their sustainability goals by providing them with precise, transparent data detailing the significant environmental benefits of CarbiCrete’s cement-free CMUs.
“This EPD demonstrates the substantial impact that our technology has on reducing the CO2 footprint of concrete. CarbiCrete’s technology provides considerable value to the construction industry and end users, and this EPD enables them to make more informed comparisons to meet their sustainability goals,” says Jacob Homiller, CEO of CarbiCrete. “We look forward to working with Climate Earth on additional EPDs as we bring to market more innovative products to decarbonize the built environment.”
“CarbiCrete’s innovative approach—eliminating cement and drastically reducing CO2 emissions—sets them apart as a true leader in sustainable concrete,” said Chris Erickson, CEO of Climate Earth. “By working together, we’re able to create product and site-specific EPDs showcasing these extraordinary carbon reductions. Different from industry averages, our EPDs capture the full impact of using local suppliers and recycled materials, empowering clients to highlight their sustainability efforts with clarity and precision.”
This coming January, Climate Earth and CarbiCrete will be co-hosting a webinar that will take an in-depth look at the LCA/EPD process, providing participants with technical insights into how CarbiCrete achieves such remarkable GWP reductions.
In September, it was announced that Canal Block, a masonry producer in Port Colborne, Ontario will begin producing CarbiCrete products in early 2025.
About CarbiCrete
CarbiCrete is a Montreal-based carbon removal technology company whose patented technology enables the production of cement-free, decarbonized concrete made with industrial by-products and captured carbon dioxide. Carbicrete.com
About Climate Earth
Climate Earth is the first and only global provider of on-demand, digital EPDs and business intelligence tools for the concrete industry. Climate Earth’s mission is to increase transparency and help concrete producers accelerate product innovation for low carbon concrete with on-demand EPDs and advanced digital tools that measure, analyze, and project environmental impacts. Founded in 2008 and based in Richmond, California, Climate Earth systems have automated EPD creation for over 1,200 ready mix, block and cement plants worldwide and have generated over 70,000 third party verified EPDs. For more information visit: climateearth.com
Media Contacts:
CarbiCrete
Yuri Mytko
yuri.mytko@Carbicrete.com
Climate Earth
Jules Conde
jules@climateearth.com

It is clear that reducing new greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions levels is critical to achieving global net-zero targets and capping global warming at 1.5°C. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that solutions must go beyond emissions reductions and begin to incorporate carbon dioxide removal (CDR) if we truly want to achieve these goals.
Without CDR, legacy emissions—those which have historically already been released into the air—will prove difficult to offset by 2050. In fact, the World Resources Institute (WRI) reports that we may need to remove “up to 10 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide per year by mid-century — that’s equivalent to the volume of 4,000,000 Olympic swimming pools.”
CDR is often divided into nature-based and technology-based removals. Nature-based removals include land management, afforestation and reforestation, while technology-based removals include enhanced rock weathering, carbon storage in biomass, carbon mineralization, and direct air capture (DAC).
A major benefit of technology-based CDR as opposed to nature-based solutions is the permanence and longevity offered by many CDR technologies. For example, carbon mineralization, the process of converting carbon dioxide into calcium carbonate for permanent storage in rock-like materials, has been proven to trap emissions out of the air and into these materials for thousands of years.
While nature-based CDR has seen widespread expansion, technology-based CDR has historically experienced a comparatively slow rate of adoption, and is only now catching up. This is largely due to the need for advanced R&D to cost-effectively scale these new technologies. Once brought to full industrial scale, the capacity of technological CDR has the potential to rapidly enable net-zero goals on a global scale.
Of 72 countries that have submitted a long term strategy (LTS) for climate change mitigation to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), over 25 plan to incorporate technological CDR into their forward-looking climate portfolio. This number is bound to grow as CDR technologies mature and become inherently less risky to adopt on a nationwide basis.
While it is important to consider a diverse portfolio of CDR technologies in net-zero strategies, the WRI also emphasizes that, over time, technology-based CDR must begin to outpace that of nature-based CDR if we are going to achieve net zero emissions. One way to promote nascent tech-based CDR solutions is through procurement of materials that make use of CDR processes.
At CarbiCrete, CDR technology is applied to the production of concrete— the most-used manmade material in the world. Concrete’s chief ingredient, cement, is the source of nearly 8% of all annual GHG emissions worldwide. CarbiCrete’s proprietary technology uses carbon mineralization to cure a steel slag-based concrete, doing away with cement, which is responsible for nearly 95% of its associated emissions. Through avoiding new emissions and trapping historical ones, the CarbiCrete process exemplifies the use of CDR for building a cleaner future.

Specifying suitable construction materials is key to developing infrastructure that is resilient to climate events. For both commercial builds, as well as home renovations, permeable solutions like Turfstone and grow-through concrete pavers represent a landscaping solution that is made to last and advantageous in a time of growing climate concern. This lies in their inherent attributes, including a grid or lattice structure that allows water to pass through into stone or grass-filled voids, alleviating the effects of heavy rain.
Grow-through pavers are landscaping solutions that support drainage through their porosity and design that enables larger spaces and joints in between the pieces. These concrete pavers can support both pedestrian and vehicular traffic, and come in a variety of designs and layouts that contribute to enhancing beauty in a landscaping project. Additionally, they are advantageous due to being precast concrete products—contributing to enhanced durability and quality.
In addition to these advantages, it is in the face of growing flooding and storm risk that permeable products prevail as an extremely beneficial solution. In a recent article with La Presse Canadienne, Stéphane Blais explains in the case of Quebec that massive rainfalls are overloading underground networks unprepared for such large amounts of water, backing up sewers and turning both the streets and many residential properties into “swimming pools”.
Blais further underlines that “to make cities more resilient to climate change, one idea is to allow rainwater to infiltrate the ground without passing through underground networks by making parking lots, sidewalks and streets more permeable, for example.”
Grow-through concrete pavers are therefore becoming critical to homeowners and municipalities alike. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) explains that these alternative materials reduce runoff by filtering rainwater, allowing heavy rain to seep through the surface to layers of soil and gravel below. Additionally, this process enables some filtration of pollutants that contribute to water pollution. These pavers are also well-suited to winter conditions, due to their advanced melting properties that can reduce the need for snow plowing and salt applications. Their overall resulting drainage and resilience properties make these products cost effective for users over their life cycle.
CarbiCrete technology fully decarbonizes concrete products through the complete replacement of cement with a byproduct of the steel industry, steel slag, and the use of carbon mineralization technology. CarbiCrete’s new CarbiFlo grow-through paver, produced for our commercialization partner Patio Drummond, enables permeability and addresses weather events like storms and flooding, while lowering emissions and removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This product will be groundbreaking for landscaping projects of all sizes looking to integrate both sustainability and resilience.