“Green Financing is Key”

Seratech was delighted to have been invited to join a panel discussion at Climate Week NYC earlier this month where CEO Sam Draper spoke about how to speed up the implementation of new technologies designed to decarbonise concrete and cement.

Sam began the conversation, hosted by Climate Group, by giving a summary of Seratech’s core technology and how it relates to the built environment.

The panel consisted of other key players in the sector including Brimstone Energy and Material Evolution. In response to a question on the barriers and challenges of climate tech being adopted by the marketplace, Sam spoke about science being the easy part and reflected on the need to finance a green transition and “demonstrate to investors that green tech and climate tech is a good investment”. He also emphasised the importance of policy playing a part in making high carbon alternatives less attractive.

Seratech was equally inspired to hear from Ryan Roberts, Global Head of Sustainable Construction at Holcim, who gave a poignant keynote speech at the event in which he spoke about the level of smoke pollution from bush fires affecting his own family as well as areas within the Great Barrier Reef now considered to be dead.

He referred to the climate crisis as a “big problem” before bluntly stating that “we’re not on track for a 1.5-degree or even 2-degree scenario having just had the hottest three month period on record - the first time this has happened during summer in the northern hemisphere”.

As he brought the discussion back to the subject of concrete , he acknowledged that the built environment does present one of the biggest opportunities to solve the problem globally stating that experts agree we must halve emissions by 2030 including a 40% reduction in upfront carbon: “Decarbonising concrete is key to reaching the targets and reducing concrete’s carbon footprint”.

Other words of wisdom came from Peter DiMaggio, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Thornton Tomasetti and founding member of Concrete Zero stating: “Engineers use and apply science in creative and innovative ways to make the world a better place. We are collectively part of one of the greatest challenges of our generation: to continue to power the world and build resilient infrastructure in an environmentally sensitive way. If the process to fabricate our building materials is dirty, we are going to start in the hole.”

Seratech looks forward to further collaborating with Concrete Zero's innovation hub as it begins to scale up solutions to decarbonise cement and concrete.