Empa Wins Building Award 2025 for Carbon Negative Concrete Innovation

Empa Wins Building Award 2025 for Carbon Negative Concrete Innovation

(IN BRIEF) Empa’s Concrete and Asphalt Lab won the Building Award 2025 for its groundbreaking CO₂-storing concrete, featuring biochar-based carbon pellets that replace traditional aggregates. This innovation can yield CO₂-neutral or CO₂-negative concrete without sacrificing performance. Empa is partnering with industry to produce these pellets at scale, with the first installation slated for the Beyond Zero unit in the NEST modular research building. Beyond this development, Empa’s “Mining the Atmosphere” project seeks to extract CO₂ from air or seawater, convert it into fuels and polymers, and ultimately sequester carbon in landfills. Success will depend on further material and process improvements, plus supportive business models and regulations.

(PRESS RELEASE) DÜBENDORF, 30-Jun-2025 — /EuropaWire/ — Empa has been honored as one of the recipients of the Building Award 2025, recognized for pioneering CO₂-storing concrete at the biennial ceremony held at KKL Lucerne in late June. A team from Empa’s Concrete and Asphalt Lab—Pietro Lura, Mateusz Wyrzykowski, Nikolajs Toropovs, Daniel Grossegger and Frank Winnefeld—received the award in the Research, Development, Start-ups category on behalf of the institute. Their innovative concrete incorporates carbon-rich biochar pellets, offering a promising route to slash emissions in the construction sector.

Concrete could store considerable amounts of CO₂ if conventional aggregates were replaced by pellets made from biochar. Picture: Empa

Traditional cement production contributes roughly eight percent of global CO₂ emissions. To tackle this challenge, Empa’s researchers devised a method for integrating biochar into concrete not as loose powder but as compact pellets made from biochar, water and cement. Unlike untreated biochar, which soaks up water and costly additives, these pellets replace part of the conventional aggregate without compromising the concrete’s performance.

“The initial results are highly encouraging,” explains Mateusz Wyrzykowski. “Our carbon pellets enable the production of CO₂-neutral or even CO₂-negative concrete that behaves just like standard concrete in buildings and infrastructure.” Empa is now collaborating with industrial partners to scale up pellet manufacturing. The first real-world application will appear in the new NEST unit, Beyond Zero, Empa and Eawag’s modular research building, which showcases cutting-edge low-carbon and carbon-sequestering construction technologies.

he Mining the Atmosphere concept in a nutshell: Global activities (blue): (1) Carbon dioxide (CO₂) is extracted from the atmosphere or oceans using renewable energy. (2) Hydrogen (H₂) is produced with renewable energy. (3) Methane (CH₄) or methanol (CH₃OH) is synthesized from carbon dioxide and hydrogen. (4) Polymers are produced from methanol (and possibly methane). (5) Polymers and methane are distributed via existing logistics chains. Local activities (green): (6) Methane is converted by thermal decomposition (pyrolysis) into hydrogen for clean energy and solid carbon (C). (7) Carbon dioxide is converted by photosynthesis into biomass, which is then pyrolyzed. (8) Waste polymers are pyrolyzed. (9) Carbon from all these sources is incorporated into building materials. (10) Carbon is combined with silicon (Si) to form silicon carbide (SiC), which is also used in building materials. (11) Finally, used building materials end up in landfills, which serve as final carbon sinks and bind the carbon dioxide permanently. Graphics: Empa

Looking beyond biochar, Empa’s large-scale “Mining the Atmosphere” initiative aims to capture CO₂ directly from air or seawater using renewable energy. Captured carbon would be converted into fuels like methane or methanol, then transformed into polymers or other building materials. At the end of their lifecycle, these materials—and even spent building components—would be deposited in specialized landfills to lock away carbon permanently. Achieving this vision hinges on advances in materials science, process engineering, new economic models, and regulatory frameworks that support decentralized renewable energy use.

Media Contacts:

Prof. Dr. Pietro Lura
Concrete & Asphalt
Phone +41 58 765 4135
pietro.lura@empa.ch

Dr. Mateusz Wyrzykowski
Concrete & Asphalt
Phone +41 58 765 4541
mateusz.wyrzykowski@empa.ch

Manuel Martin
Communications
Phone +41 58 765 4454
redaktion@empa.ch

SOURCE: EMPA