Concrete just got a makeover and could slash the cost of housing in Europe

euronews (in English)

Concrete just got a makeover and could slash the cost of housing in Europe  Paebbl’s technology could transform the construction industry and reduce concrete emissions by up to 70%.  READ MORE : http://www.euronews.com/2025/05/26/concrete-just-got-a-makeover-and-could-slash-the-cost-of-housing-in-europe  Subscribe to our channel. Euronews is available on Dailymotion in 12 languages

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00:00I think Europe is at the forefront, but are we actually meeting planetary needs

00:05of our future generations? No, we need to speed up.

00:14Hello, you're watching The Big Question, a series from Euronews where we speak to leaders

00:20in business about some of the most pressing issues on today's agenda. I'm Angela Barnes

00:25and today I'm joined by Marta Sjogren, the co-founder and co-CEO of Pebble, a Nordic-Dutch company

00:33storing CO2 in construction materials. First of all, can you just give us a little bit

00:39more context about what Pebble does? We take CO2, the gas, the carbon dioxide, and quite

00:45simply turn it into CO3. So it's a solid state carbonate and thereby we lock away CO2 permanently.

00:54So we mimic a natural process whereby in nature every day since the beginning of times and

01:01forever, CO2 that's in the air doesn't actually want to be in the air and it will get pulled

01:07down by rain, by water, and it will merge with magnesium silicates or calcium silicates and

01:16it will form a carbonate rock. All we do is that we industrially speed that up about 10

01:22million times and therefore in an industrial reactor you can just generate the same reaction

01:28in minutes. What other materials can be made with Pebble's technology? What we have experimented

01:34with are bioplastics, regular plastics, paper, and then of course concrete. And as a company,

01:44because we want to restore the planetary carbon balance by quite a large amount by the year 2050,

01:50we focus on the most high priority sector, which is concrete. And concrete is the most widely

01:57used material after water. Concrete as well is often seen as one of the hardest sectors to decarbonize.

02:11Why is that? Concrete is difficult to decarbonize because cement is difficult to decarbonize.

02:19Cement also for various reasons hasn't been really innovated on for quite a long time. There's really

02:26been no incentives. Now there are incentives. There is the climate urgency, that's one thing. There's also

02:33the increasing costs of production of everything because of the supply chains that are getting more

02:39complicated. And finally, and not the least, we need to build more. So it's becoming more of an agenda item.

02:48Industrial resilience is as a whole. I read on your website, Pebble's solution reduces the carbon

02:53footprint of concrete by 70%. What does that mean for the construction industry, for example, which

03:00accounts for 8% of global emissions? Well, firstly, technically we can reduce it up to that amount.

03:08Now it's up to the value chain to figure out how much of a material it allows to input into the

03:15concrete mix. So what's happening in Europe right now is that the European trading system of CO2 emissions,

03:23so the ETS, is opening up to cement being charged for the emissions that it produces. Because we replace

03:32some portion of cement, therefore those using our material can decrease the cost of material

03:39procurement. Because we simply do not have a carbon tax because we're a negative emissions technology.

03:45Whilst we're very, very small, like we are right now, of course our cost of production is higher than

03:50regular concrete ingredients. However, within the coming five years or less, we foresee that we will be

03:57quite price competitive. And that's because we're using CO2, which is usually a waste stream,

04:03and as an input in the mix. What could this mean for the future of housing in Europe?

04:08In Europe, if we are good at adopting technologies like ours, we will not only be environmentally more

04:15friendly, but because we're more economical in terms of the overall energy footprint,

04:20it should also get cheaper. And Martha, the EU is often seen as a leader in sustainability. Do you

04:25think the pace of change here is fast enough in Europe, or are we still lagging, would you say,

04:30when it comes to large-scale industrial decarbonisation? I think that lagging is a question of lagging

04:38behind who? I think US, China? No, I think Europe is at the forefront. But are we actually meeting

04:46planetary needs of our future generations? No, we need to speed up. I can't comment about other parts

04:54of the world. Other than I think China is doing some interesting things. I think Europe is ahead,

05:01and US is very quickly falling behind. It's very unfortunate to see. You touched on the US seems to

05:07be rolling back on its carbon capture programmes. How do you see this divergence shaping the future of

05:13global decarbonisation efforts? It's very difficult to tell what is going to happen. I mean,

05:20every day we wake up to some kind of news that we don't know what to do with. What we do know is

05:26that, you know, talent is central to any economy. And more than ever before, we have talent from

05:34amazing backgrounds in the US reaching out to us because they're worried about whether it's about

05:40scientific integrity or economically rational decisions. They're worried about rational decision

05:48making in the US. And here in Europe, we seem to be quite stable. And so I think there's going to be

05:55a huge influx of talent that just wants to deliver on their career targets and their planetary ambitions,

06:02frankly. So Marta, with the EU clean industrial deal targeting a 90% emissions reduction by 2040,

06:09how do you see the role of private companies like Pebble, of course, in helping meet these very

06:14ambitious targets? I believe that private companies will be at the very centre of this, leading the way

06:20in terms of creating a blueprint for how you can use the built environment as a sustainability solution

06:27and also save money. But let's not forget, most concrete today is used by public spaces. So hopefully,

06:36the public projects that are going to be built in the coming decade or slightly more than a decade

06:42will learn quickly from the private sector and also therefore enable the larger scale up of these

06:48technologies. How does Pebble's technology contribute to the overall European vision of transforming the

06:54the built environment into a massive carbon sink? So that's a great question. So in Europe,

07:01we are very committed to resource efficiency and the built environment, because it is such a huge

07:08source of emissions today, if you can flip that equation and every single building can be storing a

07:14little bit of carbon as a carbon custodian, I think that goes a long way, both economically and

07:19environmentally. And if you think about the bigger picture here in Europe, we're quite built out,

07:26but the Global South is just in that process of building out infrastructure and building out cities.

07:32And so from Europe, we can be leading the way with adopting the technologies quickly,

07:36and then also partnering with the Global South to actually scale these technologies beyond Europe.

07:41Brilliant. Well, Marta, I wish you the very best of luck with scaling up and thank you very much for

07:47joining us on The Big Question. Thank you for having me.

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