Artisans of carbon-neutral concrete

Seratech wants architects to continue to design beautiful and safe buildings with concrete – sustainably. The OBEL AWARD winner 2022 demonstrates the importance of collaboration between academia, the concrete industry, and architects in the fight against climate change.

Cement, which is the main ingredient in concrete, accounts for 8% of all global CO2 emission. That makes 3 billion tonnes each year. Seratech offers a solution to reduce it to zero.

The founders of Seratech, PhD students at Imperial College London Sam Draper and Barney Shanks, have discovered a simple way to capture waste CO2 and utilise it in the manufacturing of cement, resulting in carbon-neutral concrete products. For this, they have received the OBEL AWARD 2022.

“It is such an honour to receive the OBEL AWARD. This visibility will help us attract people in industry and scale our technology – and scale it rapidly. Humanity can’t afford to spend 20-50 years scaling the technology to give us sustainable materials. It needs to be now,” says Sam Draper.

“Architects and designers are already working with things such as intelligent design, flexible use, special types of formwork, and repurposing of materials. These are levers they can pull to reduce the carbon associated with buildings. What we’re trying to do is give them another lever,” says Barney Shanks.