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Cut Emissions, Save Energy by building with fly ash.

Mixing fly ash into concrete is just one on the long list of perhaps thousands of solutions to help cut greenhouse gas emissions. Fly ash – a residue of burning coal in power plants – when blended into cement and concrete cuts carbon dioxide emissions by energy consumption avoided: One ton of CO2 is avoided for every ton of fly ash blended into concrete. Cement and concrete manufacturing are highly energy intensive, thus high on the list of industries that need to find ways to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

“For every ton of cement manufactured, about 6.5 million BTUs of energy are consumed. For every ton of cement manufactured, about one ton of carbon dioxide is released. Replacing that ton of cement with fly ash would save enough electricity to power the average American home for 24 days, and reduce carbon dioxide emissions equal to two months use of an automobile.

“Experts estimate that cement production contributes to about 7 percent of carbon dioxide emissions from human sources.”

Unfortunately, the use of fly ash in concrete is not met entirely with open arms by the concrete and building industry. Not all fly ash ends up in concrete or other products. So, the waste product that is captured from the chimneys of coal-fired power plants, in efforts to cut air pollution, is still dumped into landfills, kept on site at power plants, or perhaps illegally dumped in the ocean.

If the concrete industry is not that interested in fly ash, another energy intensive industry might be: the wallboard (aka sheetrock or drywall) industry.

Drywall is the most common indoor building material in the United States, with more than 40 million square feet produced each year. The demand is so high that drywall manufacturing now accounts for 1 percent of annual energy consumption in the United States. However, current drywall manufacturing techniques involve superheating, or calcining, in gas-fired ovens. This energy-intensive process requires 100,000 BTUs or more per drywall sheet, and emits an estimated 51 million tons of greenhouse gasses each year,” says the Spertech website.

The company says that more than 60 million tons of fly ash are generated from power plants each year. Approximately 40,000,000 tons of fly ash are disposed in landfills.

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