How a small business in Arizona is helping Concrete Carbonate.

Block-Lite is a small concrete manufacturer located in the industrial corridor of Flagstaff, Arizona. The third-generation family business makes bricks and other stone materials for retaining walls, driveways and landscaping projects. The company is already a local leader in sustainability – in 2020, it became the first manufacturer to run its operations in Flagstaff with solar panels. But now he is doing an even greater work.

On Tuesday, Block-Light announced a pioneering collaboration with climate technology startups AirCapture and CarbonBuil to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and embed it in concrete blocks. The companies estimate the project will reduce the carbon footprint of Block-Light products by 70 percent, creating a model they believe could reshape the industry.

Concrete creates a big problem in the climate. It’s literally one of the building blocks of society, and it’s growing more carbon-intensive every year. Most of the carbon is generated not from the production of concrete, but from the production of the main ingredient, cement. Cement production is responsible for 10 percent of industrial carbon emissions in the US.

CarbonBuilt has developed a solution that addresses the issue in two different ways. First, the company found a proprietary way to replace cement with cheap, locally available industrial waste materials. CEO Rahul Shendure told Grist that they include common products in coal plants, steelmaking and chemical products that are mostly destined for landfills. The second work of the company is the way the equipment is injected into the concrete blocks – by treating them with carbon dioxide. That’s where AirCapture comes in. The company will build the machine that extracts carbon dioxide from the atmosphere directly at the block-light station.

“Our technology is very flexible from where we get CO2,” Shendure said. “What’s particularly unique about this project is that we’re capturing carbon dioxide from air capture technology.”

It’s an idea that a handful of other companies are pursuing. In February, a similar partnership between another live-air manufacturing company called Heirloom and concrete startup Carbon Pond demonstrated the process for the first time. This isn’t CarbonBuilt’s first project, either—the company is renovating a concrete plant called Blair Block in Alabama. In this case, CO2 comes from biomass burning in the boiler.

The Flagstaff project is funded, in part, by a $150,000 grant from the Four Corners Carbon Coalition, a group of local governments that fund projects that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The coalition was born out of the realization that societies with the ambitious goal of becoming carbon neutral will need to invest in such solutions, many of which are still embryonic.

“If a local government tries to do this on their own, it’s very expensive and time-consuming, and we don’t have the technical expertise,” said Susie Streiff, director of sustainability for Boulder County, Colorado. Coalition said in an interview with Grist last year. “We are trying to create a local government platform to pool resources and eliminate carbon dioxide.”

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In addition to this financial support, Mr. Shendure said that he plans to sell carbon credits for the carbon that the air capture equipment emits from the atmosphere and to use less cement. “We have received a letter of intent from the buyer and it will be critical to this project,” he said. “Nowadays there are a lot of companies that pay a premium for credit for emerging technologies so that we can get some of these in the real world.”

Block-Light did not respond to Grist’s request, but in a press release, the company indicated that the new concrete products will not be more expensive than the current offering. “Usually sustainable building materials require a trade-off between cost and performance, but what is unique about this project is that there is no ‘green premium’.” Block-lit said. We can produce unique ultra-low carbon blocks at an affordable cost to traditional blocks, accelerating adoption and impact.