THE ECONOMIC CHALLENGE

The most significant obstacle in Turkey, Celik says, is economic. “Supplementary materials are mostly not used,” he says, “because the materials don’t sacrifice any strength compared to the standard materials but they also reduce the cost of cement.”

In other words, the less carbon-emitting cement option costs less and is therefore less profitable.

“Is there is there a rationale [in Turkey] for doing things differently going forward? Absolutely,” says Pedro Martins Barata, a V.P. at the Environmental Defense Fund. Barata oversees the EDF’s efforts to develop carbon markets to address climate challenges. “Nobody wants the earthquake and nobody wishes it. But [rebuilding sustainably] is the thin silver lining on a catastrophic event. So to that extent, since you have that opportunity, let’s grab that, let’s have those minimum requirements, and let’s replan and plan on a different, low carbon [approach]. That’s where the role of development agencies, the national planning agencies, etc, comes in.”

Setting sustainable priorities and lining up incentives in the earliest stages of a construction project are the most important steps to bake in carbon reductions as it proceeds. The Turkish government and its international partners have the clout to both entice and demand sustainable rebuilding. The African Development Bank has pioneered a model for sustainable building: it’s adaptation benefits mechanism (ABM).  Though they have several moving parts, ABMs basically pay the builders extra money for the every unit of a resilient or sustainable project they put up.  The payments are based on savings yielded over time as compared to the costs of less resilient approaches. Another approach, suggested by Firat Yucesoy, the engineer founder of Gemina International, one of Turkey’s largest materials trading companies, is to offer favorable credit terms to cement manufacturers and contractors who commit to sustainable cement and concrete, an approach he says that would be especially attractive at a time of tight credit and high interest rates. Turkey, Yucesoy notes, is the world’s largest exporter of cement and other building supplies, and trends in its materials sector have an outsized influence on materials worldwide.

Celik sees the use of calcined clays as part of more comprehensive strategies to lower carbon emissions over the long-run in the rebuilt zones. He recommends erecting resilient building designs to last a hundred years or more, smart city planning that makes room for gardens and forested spaces, and the integrating renewable energy to the region which today relies largely on coal-fired power plants.

NEVER LET A GOOD CRISIS GO TO WASTE

When the world was cobbling together the United Nations following the devastation of WWII, Winston Churchill reputedly opined “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” Few discrete current building projects in the world will reach the scale of the post-earthquake reconstruction in Turkey. Nearly any big change in the cement industry takes years to implement and the effects unfold over decades.

“There is only one investment cycle between now and 2050 for the industry to rethink how to produce low-carbon cement and concrete to drive down the emissions from business as usual,” says Radhika Lalit, principal of the Cement and Concrete Initiative at the Rocky Mountain Institute. “What we build today will be around in 2050 and we’re memorializing the carbon inside these buildings primarily through concrete, which cannot be undone.”

If sustainable concrete can be deployed in Turkey, the rebuilding can literally and figuratively pave the way for the rest of the world. The world is expected to double, and perhaps triple the built environment by 2060. Much of that building will be driven by population growth, the rise of the global middle class and by urbanization. But there will also be a lot of concrete spent to build resilience to disasters and in rebuilding after disasters strike. Sea rise alone is estimated to put hundreds of millions of coastal residents at risk and require more than $1 trillion worth of sea walls. Building those walls with standard portland cement would be like bailing out a boat and learning that every bucket of water removed causes two more buckets’ worth to flood in.