Major construction firm unveils ‘climate-improved’ concrete piles
31 October 2024
With climate neutrality deadlines looming in the decades to come, Sweden-based construction and civil engineering company Peab announced it has developed a new “climate-improved” solution for concrete pile making.
Noting its internal expectation to reach operational climate neutrality by 2045, Peab said its latest range of ECO-Piles will be manufactured in three different variants for carbon emission savings.
“Level 1 are at least 10% [carbon emissions savings] compared to conventional concrete, between 22% and 29% in level 2 and 34% in level 3,” said Peab, noting the figures were achieved by reducing the amount of cement in the product.
Anneli Lindgren, construction manager for manufacturing at Peab Grundläggning, added, “In our new ECO-Piles, we have both reduced the proportion of steel and replaced some of the cement with Merit, a climate-efficient binder made from recovered blast furnace slag, which all in all provides a substantial improvement in climate efficiency.”
Noting piles’ heavy usage in road, railway, and residential projects, the company added that, “since more than every second pile metre installed in Sweden is made of concrete, large amounts of cement, the binder that is responsible for up to 90% of concrete’s CO₂ footprint, is used.
“In Sweden more than one million pile-metres of concrete are produced annually, of which about one quarter is manufactured by Peab Grundläggning’s three factories in Sjövik, Tollarp and Västerås.”
Peab Grundläggning CEO Patrick Andersson said customers can expect the new product to be available in summer of 2025 at the earliest.