How we build our cities really matters. We are currently building the equivalent of New York City every month to accommodate the world’s growing population, and we’ll be doing so for the next 40 years. The built environment accounts for 37% of global greenhouse gas emissions. A third of that—the upfront emissions—is produced at the construction phase largely from the production of building materials; the remaining emission are buildings’ operational emissions, linked mainly to heating, cooling, and powering them.

That’s why the industry is innovating to offer more sustainable and circular building solutions from foundation to rooftop—and at scale.

But we need to decarbonize the sector faster if we want to stay within the 1.5 degrees Celsius scenario, and innovation is one of the key levers the construction industry has to achieve this. Hard-to-abate industries like ours will be disrupted by novel startup solutions. The technologies that will decarbonize construction are no longer blue sky thinking or out of reach. Disruptive solutions are here now. And they’re ready to scale.

Partner with startups

Recognizing the enormous role innovation plays in decarbonizing our sector, we need to push the boundaries of what’s possible by fostering an open innovation ecosystem and partnering with the most promising startups to bring their technologies to scale across our markets.

In my experience at Holcim, this is a journey the entire industry needs to embark on. In 2021 we joined the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium as a founding member, representing the building materials industry, to accelerate climate action through innovation with like-minded companies.

Now, our corporate venture capital and open innovation unit, Holcim MAQER Ventures, is part of our green growth engine which helps us identify the most promising startups to scale up their impact together. Through venture capital, venture clienting and an accelerator program for leading startups within the construction sector, Holcim MAQER Ventures is helping us become a first mover and reinvent how the world builds. For example, we entered a partnership with Greentown Labs, the largest incubator of climate tech startups in North America, to accelerate open innovation for the decarbonization of the built environment.

Decarbonized cement

The most consumed man-made resource on the planet and the backbone of urbanization is concrete. Its production starts with cement, the glue that binds its other ingredients together. Traditionally, cement manufacturing is a carbon-intensive process, but we are working to change this. We currently have six projects that utilize advanced carbon capture, storage, and utilization technologies designed to enable the production of 8 million tons of fully decarbonized cement. This is already helping us deliver on our 1.5 degree-aligned net-zero 2030 and 2050 targets and make net-zero cement and concrete a reality, at scale, this decade. Some of the new technologies our startup partners developed offer an opportunity to go beyond that—to make cement and concrete a carbon sink.

Sublime Systems, one of our latest portfolio additions, uses a breakthrough electrochemical process to produce cement at room temperature without the need for a kiln. Rather than limestone, Sublime uses non-carbonate minerals and industrial waste as its feedstocks, avoiding the CO2 produced from the chemical reaction to manufacture clinker.

A zero-carbon cement is not the limit. CO2 can be mineralized and put back into the construction process. CO2 mineralization is a natural process that turns carbon dioxide into stone—but as with most geological processes, it takes centuries. Holcim also invested in Travertine, whose proprietary circular technology recycles industrial waste as a feedstock and binds CO2 in the process while producing fresh raw materials for industrial purposes including cement. Our investment will support the scaling of this technology to decarbonize cement.

Paebbl, a Scandinavian startup, converts CO2 into a future-proof industrial raw material that turns the built environment into a permanent carbon store. Our investment into the company will enable Paebbl to focus on commissioning a demonstration plant in the first half of 2025, paving the way for commercial deployment.

Other innovations

Finally, once we get to the production of concrete for the world’s essential infrastructure, we utilize the technology of our portfolio company neustark, a pioneer in CO2 mineralization for permanent carbon removal that has developed a technology that permanently binds CO2 in recycled concrete. We are rolling it out at our recycling plants to drive circular construction and remove CO2 from the atmosphere at the same time.

These are just a few of the promising technologies that are helping us tackle the hardest part of the built environment’s carbon emissions—the upfront emissions—and these innovations are no longer 10 or more years out before starting to make an impact. We’ll get tangible results in the next two to five years. To encourage more innovation, large players need to continue collaborating with startups and foster open innovation ecosystems. Ours currently consists of 180 startups and with the help of Holcim MAQER Ventures we plan to keep it growing. That leaves me optimistic about what’s possible in the building sector.

The magic of such partnerships lies in the combination of a business at scale and cutting-edge technologies and innovations that startups provide to businesses like ours. They’re also a prime example of how cross-industry collaboration can drive meaningful change. By combining diverse strengths and expertise, partnerships between large companies like ours and startups like Sublime, Travertine, and neustark result in the development of innovative and impactful solution to move the needle and achieve net zero in the built environment. Their game-changing solutions complement our large-scale operations and commitment to sustainable construction.

I strongly encourage my colleagues and everyone else within the construction value chain to push the boundaries of our sector and together find disruptive solutions that will decarbonize building, bringing us much closer to solving the climate challenge.

Nollaig Forrest is chief sustainability officer at Holcim.