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The quest for a low-carbon alternative to traditional concrete mixes has become a saga of heroic proportions. Not quite as heroic as Captain Scott鈥檚 trek to the south pole nor as epoch-defining as the Wright brothers鈥� mastery of powered flight 鈥� but almost.

By now, most people understand the impact of the cement industry on global climate change: by all accounts it contributes up to 8% of human carbon emissions. And given that many people believe that a failure to arrest climate change will result in Armageddon, there鈥檚 plenty of incentive to find new, less carbon-intensive, solutions.

Most efforts so far have involved replacing some of the cement in a concrete mix with alternative materials. Favourites seem to be ground granulated blast furnace slag (a waste byproduct of steel production) or pulverized fuel ash, another waste product, this time from coal-fired power stations.

But these can only reduce the embodied carbon of a concrete mix by a small amount. And it should be remembered that both slag and ash are the product of prior industrial processes that, in producing them, have already generated massive carbon emissions.

Consequently, most technologies currently available can only reduce concrete鈥檚 enormous carbon footprint by a small amount.

Another technology, not exclusive to cement production, is carbon capture and storage whereby CO₂ is extracted from an industrial process and stored permanently, usually deep underground in geological formations. Again, it鈥檚 helpful but not in itself a panacea.

But there鈥檚 a company in the Netherlands that is now chemically bonding CO₂ gas with naturally-occurring minerals to produce a cement substitute that doesn鈥檛 just reduce concrete鈥檚 carbon footprint but can, it claims, make concrete carbon-negative.

This article was first published in the March 2026 issue of 萝莉原创 Magazine. Sign up online.

The company, called Paebbl, takes crushed rock (specifically, the magnesium silicate rock known as olivine), mixes it with water in a specially-designed reactor vessel and adds CO₂ along with certain chemical catalysts. This process causes the CO₂ to bond with the rock to produce a material that can be used to replace cement in a concrete mix.

Paebbl was set up in 2021 by Helsinki-born Andreas Saari and Pol Knops, a Dutch researcher and mineralisation specialist, along with venture capitalist Marta Sj枚gren and Jane Walrud, a serial tech entrepreneur based in Sweden.

The company has already supplied its product for use in a number of trial applications, most recently in the restoration of a 1917 building, the Veerhuis, or Ferry House, in Rotterdam and a footbridge that claims to be the first ever to be built with 鈥渃arbon-neutral鈥� concrete.

Ana Luisa Vaz, vice-president of products at Paebbl, admits that the company is not the only business exploring the use of CO₂ mineralisation: 鈥淭hat said, we believe that we are one of the most advanced in the carbon-storing materials category.

鈥淢ost of the solutions on the market require new ways of producing cement and remain at pilot scale. Paebbl is one of very few companies that both permanently stores CO₂ and produces a valuable construction material at industrial scale,鈥� she says.

The mineralisation process at the heart of the Paebbl product is essentially the same as that which occurs naturally through rock weathering 鈥� but massively accelerated.

鈥淩ock weathering is part of the world鈥檚 natural carbon cycle that is already pulling roughly a billion tonnes of CO₂ out of the air every year,鈥� says Paebbl co-founder Andreas Saari (pictured left).

He explains that when rainwater mixes with rock dust it slowly absorbs CO₂ from the atmosphere and binds it to the dust, locking it away as a solid material. This natural process takes aeons, whereas Paebbl makes it happen in a matter of hours.

It is this ability to turn atmospheric CO₂ into a solid that separates Paebbl鈥檚 mineralisation process from other cement substitutes designed to reduce the carbon footprint of a concrete mix. Cement is still required as an ingredient along with Paebbl, but because Paebbl is made using sequestered CO₂, the resulting concrete can become a carbon sink rather than a net carbon emitter, the company claims.

This article was first published in the March 2026 issue of 萝莉原创 Magazine. Sign up online.

鈥淪witching to lower-emission fuel sources, replacing a portion of cement with alternative mineral materials and implementing carbon capture and storage are widely-considered the three main ways to reduce the carbon footprint of concrete,鈥� says Vaz.

鈥淗owever, whilst switching or electrifying fuel sources can reduce part of cement production鈥檚 emissions, it does not address the full challenge.鈥�

This is because cement production involves heating calcium carbonate (i.e. limestone) to produce calcium oxide (quicklime) and in the process driving off the carbon in the form of CO₂ gas. 鈥淓ven with full electrification, around 40-50% of emissions remain as they are inherent to the chemical process of cement production itself,鈥� says Vaz. 鈥淕iven the scale of global cement use, additional solutions are required to tackle these unavoidable emissions.鈥�

Paebbl鈥檚 process is classified as 鈥榗arbon capture, utilisation and storage鈥� (CCUS) because it uses captured聽CO₂ from industrial emissions sites, permanently stores it as a stable solid carbonate mineral through accelerated mineralisation and uses this material to partially replace cement in concrete mixes.

鈥淭hrough its mineralisation process. Paebbl takes carbon capture and storage one step further by ensuring the carbon is chemically bound and stabilised in its lowest energy state, meaning it cannot escape back into the atmosphere, even if the structure is later demolished,鈥� argues Vaz.

As Vaz concedes, Paebbl is not the only enterprise currently investigating the potential of mineralisation technology. But she says that its production process 鈥渋s specifically designed to be energy-efficient compared to conventional mineral carbonation techniques鈥�.

The company鈥檚 proprietary technology is a low-energy alternative to traditional methods that often require energy-intensive conditions like high temperatures, high pressures or extensive mechanical processes such as crushing or grinding.

According to Vaz, Paebbl鈥檚 latest environmental product declaration (EPD) shows that Paebbl鈥檚 product has a net negative carbon footprint of minus 14.4kg CO₂-equivalent per tonne from cradle to gate. 鈥淭his means that the product removes more CO₂ than it emits during production,鈥� she says.

Based on project data, when Paebbl is used in concrete at typical cement-replacement rates, approximately 21kg of CO₂ is stored per cubic metre of concrete.

This article was first published in the March 2026 issue of 萝莉原创 Magazine. Sign up online.

鈥淧aebbl鈥檚 selling points lie in the combination of speed, scalability and real-world applicability of its unique mineralisation technology,鈥� says Vaz 鈥� and the company鈥檚 R&D programme has certainly been progressing rapidly. Most of the work has been done in the laboratory, refining the chemistry and producing samples in small batches. But in March 2025 the company set up a demonstration plant in Rotterdam to show how the material can be produced in a continuous process.

鈥淚n just 18 months, the company progressed from gramme-scale laboratory experiments to bench-scale testing and then to a fully operational pilot unit, producing 250kg of CO₂-storing material per day,鈥� says Vaz

鈥淭his execution speed is unusual for a company operating at the intersection of climate technology and industrial process engineering and it continues with the rapid development of Paebbl鈥檚 demonstration unit and planned commercial operations.鈥�

The pilot plant has allowed Paebbl to attract customers to trial the new product in their projects. One of the first applications was to provide the floor 鈥榤icro-topping鈥� for the high-end Paris boutique of French perfumier Marc-Antoine Barrois.

The aim was to burnish Barrois鈥� eco-credentials and lend some social value to his indulgent luxuries. After considering alternatives like resin terrazzo and lime-based composites, specialist contractor Design & Beton chose Paebbl to achieve a 9% reduction in carbon footprint.

In April, Dutch contractor Hakkers used Paebbl in a grout mix to secure anchors in a new quay wall for the port of Rotterdam. This project is calculated to have reduced embodied carbon in the mix by 30%, resulting in 225kg of sequestered carbon.

More recently Paebbl has supplied material for the production of precast panels to clad an extension to the Veerhuis in Rotterdam for art and culture foundation Droom en Daad, as well as the construction of a 7m-span bridge by Dutch contractor Heijmans.

The Veerhuis project used 15m³ of precast concrete. As with the Paris boutique, sustainable low-carbon materials and methods were a priority for the client. The challenge for聽 precast concrete specialist Byldis was to find a low-carbon mix that would cure rapidly.

This article was first published in the March 2026 issue of 萝莉原创 Magazine. Sign up online.

鈥淭he problem we were trying to solve was to make the concrete more sustainable,鈥� says Byldis鈥� head of engineering Bram van der Steen. 鈥淎 lot of sustainable solutions need much longer to harden and in our process that is not possible because we have to take out our panels from our moulds in one day. Paebbl was the only material that also made a structural impact which bound the carbon in a few hours and, like normal cement, gave us a panel we could take out of the mould in a short period of time.鈥�

Heijmans鈥� footbridge, built at the contractor鈥檚 headquarters in Rosmalen, and unveiled in January this year, is claimed to achieve something that was previously considered impossible in structural construction: a fully carbon-neutral mix containing 75% 鈥榗ircular鈥� raw materials with no primary sand or gravel.

Besides using 30% Paebbl in the mix, Heijmans also incorporated biochar and recycled aggregate in the concrete deck. Paebbl contributed to a total embodied carbon reduction of almost 30% compared with the already low-carbon reference concrete. The bridge deck permanently sequesters almost 66kg of CO₂ says Paebbl.

鈥淎 30% replacement rate in structural concrete is our highest to date,鈥� says Vaz. 鈥淭his pedestrian bridge demonstrates that carbon-storing materials aren鈥檛 just viable for decorative or non-structural uses; they鈥檙e ready for real infrastructure.鈥�

Vaz says that other trials of the material are now under way 鈥� including projects in the UK 鈥� and the focus is on scaling-up and continuing product development.聽 鈥淧aebbl鈥檚 focus will be on expanding real-world applications across the built environment while further developing its first-generation product to increase cement replacement levels and progress towards a cost-competitive solution.鈥�

The pilot plant in Rotterdam has the ability to process around 900 tonnes of CO₂ per year, which equates to between 2,500 and 4,000 tonnes of finished product.

鈥淭hat鈥檚 a significant scale-up from our batch production but it鈥檚 still very small-scale in terms of the construction industry,鈥� says Saari. 鈥淭he next step will be to build a full commercial-scale unit. To be economically viable we need to get cost parity with cement 鈥� and we should get close to that with our first commercial plant.鈥�