From an alumni newsletter:
When cement, a key component of concrete, the world's most widely used building material, is manufactured, it releases significant amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere--about 5 to 10 percent of the world's total emissions. Professor Franz-Josef Ulm of CEE and Georgios Constantinides, a postdoctoral researcher in DMSE, are investigating the behavior of the nanostructure of cement, in hopes that a different mineral or nanoengineered substitute could be used to produce a material with the same packing density as concrete but without requiring the same high temperatures during production that currently result in high CO2 emissions.
5 to 10 percent? Yowzaa.
R