McMinnville Based Concrete Climate Moonshot Consortium Wins High Impact Opportunity Project Grant
Business Oregon, through InC - Oregon Innovation Council, awarded Concrete Climate Moonshot Consortium, a project developed by McMinnville-based company Solid Carbon, Oregon State University, municipal partners City of McMinnville and City of Portland, industry partners, two trade associations, and local economic development organization MEDP, $241,936 in High Impact Opportunity Project (HIOP) grant funding.
The funds will be used to conduct lab testing in the development of net carbon-negative concrete formulations intended to reduce the climate impact of carbon.
The research, test, and pilot projects will result in open-source concrete formulas, a toolkit, and a case study that highlights how the industry can adopt low-carbon concrete.
Concrete is the world's most used building material with 30 billion metric tons produced annually. Demand has grown 3x in the last 40 years and the concrete/cement industry now accounts for over 8% of global carbon emissions. In Oregon alone, the concrete industry emits over 887,000 million metric tons of
greenhouse gas (equal to 190,000 passenger cars per year).
John Mead, Co-Founder of Solid Carbon expressed gratitude for the funding award and said, “We are honored to be selected for this grant to continue our work to advance low-carbon concrete in the built environment.” Oregon State University (OSU) will coordinate the collection of technical data, lead research, and evaluate
candidates for alternative binders. While industry partner Solid Carbon will lead an effort to evaluate carbon sources with the potential to sequester biogenic carbon in concrete. Professor
Jason Weiss and his team at Oregon State University are among the national leading researchers on this topic. Two municipal partners (City of Portland and City of McMinnville) intend to use low-carbon concrete in community pilot projects. The Moonshot consortium expects that relatively low-risk applications such as
sidewalks will be selected for community pilot projects.
In addition, the consortium will coordinate the publication of a case study that summarizes the findings and identifies areas of success and potential areas for additional investigation to further decrease the carbon footprint of concrete. The low-carbon concrete formulations used in the community pilot projects will be
included in a case study presented at various public engagements.
About MEDP: The Partnership includes the City of McMinnville, McMinnville Water & Light, McMinnville Industrial Promotions, the McMinnville Area Chamber of Commerce, and area businesses.
To learn more about the McMinnville Economic Development Partnership, visit www.McMinnvilleBusiness.com or find us at facebook.com/McMinnvilleBusiness.
About Solid Carbon: Solid Carbon was founded by Oregon entrepreneurs who invested in finding a sustainable, long-term solution to making the concrete industry more eco-friendly. With years of experience in contracting, concrete, and sustainable solutions, they used their combined knowledge to develop a concrete admixture that greatly reduces the damaging climate impact of concrete CO2 emissions.
About Business Oregon, InC (Oregon Innovation Council): In 2005, the Governor and Legislature brought together more than 40 leaders from the private sector, the state's four research universities, and government to create a new way to build innovation into the DNA of how Oregon does business. The result was Oregon Innovation Council (Oregon InC).
Oregon InC is a public-private partnership that helps create new jobs and new companies, diversifying Oregon's economy and bringing federal research dollars back to the state. The council provides funding to accomplish its goals via a series of programs.