American Concrete Institute releases code requirements for low-carbon concrete

The American Concrete Institute has released ACI CODE-323: Low-Carbon Concrete—Code Requirements and Commentary (Code).

The code provides provisions for concrete where reduced global warming potential is required. It was developed by a consensus process and provides commentary along with references for the user desiring to study individual questions in greater detail.

The code may be adopted as a stand-alone code or can be used in combination with a structural design code or low-carbon material code adopted by an authority having jurisdiction. It is in a format that allows reference to a set of chapters based on the structure type.

The code employs a carbon budget approach and emphasizes the use of Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) for benchmarking, aiming to standardize methodologies for reducing carbon emissions associated with concrete construction.

“In the past, standards for lowering carbon in the built environment have been difficult to define and this code represents a giant leap forward,” said Matthew Adams, Chair, ACI Committee 323. “The code provides references for various structures so that the guidelines can be applied to any project. Committee 323 members did a great deal of work to produce this Code, and it is just a beginning, as future versions will provide even more guidance to everyone designing and building with reduced-carbon concrete.”