Timely deployment of best-in-class technologies to enable development and decarbonise construction.
other · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 41444488.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-025-67489-8 and PMC identifier 12824142.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
In the face of two apparently irreconcilable global challenges - housing a growing world population and reducing CO<sub>2</sub> emissions - we analyse the current, historic and forecast data on the use of construction materials. Today, cement-based materials make up around three quarters of materials used by mass. Historically, we see that cement-based materials use goes through a peak as Gross Domestic Product per capita increases and then falls. This peak of cement use has been particularly pronounced in China, but is now on a downwards path. From now to 2050, three quarters of construction materials demand will be in low- and middle-income countries. We estimate that adopting the best available construction technologies could reduce CO<sub>2</sub> emissions by about 73% compared to business as usual by 2050. In low- and middle-income countries, the housing and infrastructure needed to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals could be supplied while simultaneously reducing their per capita CO<sub>2</sub> emissions from structural materials.