Member of the fib Technical Council (TC)

Director of the Materials and Structures Department of IFSTTAR, France

Professor at Ecole Nationale des ponts et Chaussées

Jean Michel Torrenti is the director of the Materials and structures department of IFSTTAR, France. He is also professor at Ecole nationale des ponts et chaussées. His research concerns mechanics of concrete and its coupling with durability aspects: behavior of concrete at early age, creep, leaching and is applied to model the behavior of structures such as bridges, nuclear power plants and nuclear waste storage. He is co-author of several papers and books concerning concrete and concrete structures.

Keynote Speech Title:

Concrete and Climate Change: How Can We Solve the Problem?

Presentation summary

The consumption  of  concrete  is  about  1t/year  per  every  living  human  being. In addition, for 1t of a typical concrete made with Portland cement, about 300kg of CO2 are emitted. This explains why the contribution of concrete to greenhouse gas emissions is estimated at 8% of global emissions. Because of a still growing demand, in order to limit the climate change below 1,5 or 2°C, these emissions have to strongly decrease. 

Of course, Portland cement constitutes an important part of these emissions (about 75%). Therefore, the cement companies are conducting research in order to reduce the impact of cement. But that will not be enough and concrete itself is a part of the solution. Therefore, all the participants in the construction process of concrete structures should contribute to this effort: in optimization of concrete mix design, of reinforced concrete design and even in codes.