Sustainability
RemedyAP provide strategies that benefit sustainability aims, notably lifecycle analysis for reduced emission options during protection and remediation of structures.
Our consultants are experts at understanding degradation of materials through various corrosion mechanisms on both concrete and steel.
The predominant mechanism that causes degradation of structures and materials is corrosion, if all the structural properties are properly specified.
Steel and concrete are indispensable materials in modern buildings and infrastructure.
As governments and industry make gains on embodied carbon and operational carbon, a growing focus will be keeping the carbon, embodied. This is part of the net zero strategy. Once carbon is embodied, we must aim to keep those structures for longer to lessen the extent of new construction.
The steel sector ranks first and the cement sector ranks second when it comes to CO2 emissions.
The table adjacent shows RemedyAP modelling the embodied carbon (1272 KgCO2e) of a steel beam (600UB) versus the embodied carbon (70 KgCO2e) of the paint used to protect the steel beam. This represents 5.5% of the KgCO2e budget to protect 96.5% of the embodied carbon within the steel.
RemedyAP provide similar modelling for other structures.
Maintaining the protection systems provides lasting infrastructure and enables adaptive reuse of structures.
Project specifiers have a responsibility to select the most appropriate protective systems that provide optimum durability to our infrastructure.
The carbon footprint of maintenance interventions needs to be taken into account in a lifecycle assessment (LCA) and often the advantages of durable protective systems and the consequent reduced number of maintenance panting interventions will lessen the overall environmental impact.
Asset owners are looking to adopt a whole of life approach to carbon reduction in building and infrastructure design, applying principles to identify cost effective and, ultimately, net zero carbon designs.
This is done through development of a LCA.