A Commitment to Sustainability

7/1/2025

My research at The University of Texas at Austin has emphasized sustainable cements and supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs) for over 20 years. It’s an exciting time to be ACI President as my interests and those of the Institute align. The latest ACI Strategic Plan has one of its five strategic goals as “Advance Resiliency and Sustainability” with a specific objective to “support stakeholders in achieving resiliency and sustainability.” ACI will meet these goals through a variety of efforts, some of which I’d like to highlight in this month’s President’s Memo.

At the heart of ACI are its technical committees. ACI’s mission is to advance knowledge of concrete and its use, which starts in the technical committees. The committees bring together a community of ACI members from various aspects of the industry to share and report knowledge. There are a variety of technical committees that have a large impact on the way we think about sustainable concrete mixtures, design, and construction, the most obvious of which is ACI Committee 130, Sustainability of Concrete. Other committees are specific to sustainable SCMs and cements (for example, 240, Pozzolans, and 242, Alternative Cements), concrete (for example, Subcommittee 239-F, UHPC Sustainability; 243, Seawater Concrete; and 555, Concrete with Recycled Materials), and construction (Subcommittee 301-S, Sustainability). These examples just touch the surface of the ACI technical committees that support stakeholders in learning and sharing knowledge about sustainable concrete. If you are interested in learning more about concrete sustainability, I encourage you to read their publications, attend a session at convention, or watch a webinar. ACI provides a lot of opportunities to learn.

In November 2024, ACI became a leader in defining sustainable concrete design by publishing ACI CODE-323-24: Low-Carbon Concrete—Code Requirements and Commentary, a first-of-its-kind model building code that sets embodied carbon performance requirements, also known as global warming potential (GWP). The Code was developed at an important time. As states and cities within the United States and governments around the world have issued requirements for reductions in GWP, guidance from experts who understand the concrete industry and concrete materials has been needed. ACI CODE-323 uses a carbon budget approach to limiting the emissions associated with cast-in-place concrete infrastructure and requiring designers to reduce the overall GWP of a project, while still allowing them mixture proportioning flexibility to meet other performance and design requirements. Understanding that concrete is a local material that can vary significantly with geography, the Code allows adopting jurisdictions to set their own GWP limits—providing flexibility depending on the types of materials and technologies available regionally. While the Code isn’t law yet, it can still be used as a guidance tool for engineers looking to construct lower-carbon systems. By having ACI experts develop the guidelines, the Code balances a need for sustainability with real limitations faced by the industry. The newly developed Appendix C of ACI CODE 318-25: Building Code for Structural Concrete—Code Requirements and Commentary, provides further guidance on structural design solutions for sustainable construction.

NEU is an ACI Center of Excellence for Carbon Neutral Concrete. ACI centers of excellence are subsidiaries of ACI with their own boards of direction and strategic plans. NEU’s mission aligns with ACI’s sustainability goals and is as follows: “Through leadership with integrity and global collaboration, NEU will accelerate the adoption and use of reduced-carbon concrete technologies.” NEU plays an important role in ACI’s sustainability goals as they develop education and training resources, begin technology validation processes, and partner with other organizations to drive the adoption of low-carbon materials and practices. NEU is actively growing and recruiting members to help drive its mission (www.neuconcrete.org/members).

It’s an exciting time at ACI as we shift gears to support our new strategic plan (acistrategicplan.org). The need for sustainability and resiliency in our concrete structures is vitally important, and ACI is poised to be a leader in developing and disseminating knowledge in this area.

Maria C.G. Juenger, askthepresident@concrete.org

ACI President

Matthew Adams, FACI, Chair of ACI Committee 323, presenting on ACI CODE-323-24 at the ACI Middle East Conference “From Gray to Green” in February 2025