Dartmouth Leads & Hanover Supports
Anyone driving through Hanover this summer has surely noticed the construction along East Wheelock, especially the once very deep and huge holes in front of the New Hampshire and Topliff dorms. “It looks like the College is building a subway system,” my husband commented.
Prominently displayed signs suggest otherwise. “Turning the corner from steam to hot water,” says one. “In the trenches to reach our goal,” says another. This construction is the initial stage of a $500m effort by Dartmouth to decarbonize.
Decarbonizing Concrete
Most people don’t realize that concrete accounts for 7 percent of all greenhouse emissions. It does so in two ways. First, the chemical transformation of limestone into cement, the main ingredient in most concrete, emits carbon dioxide. Second, this chemical process requires a very hot kiln, almost always using fuel that emits carbon dioxide. This is bad news given how widely concrete is used in our buildings and infrastructure. The good news is there are a growing number of ways to significantly reduce its carbon emissions and even use new mixtures of concrete to store carbon removed from the atmosphere.