Hang Lung Properties Collaborates with Zhejiang University and CLEANCO2 to Reduce Embodied Carbon at Westlake 66, Hangzhou
©Hang Lung Properties
Hang Lung Properties is delighted to announce a two-year strategic collaboration with a carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) company CLEANCO2, to apply innovations including low carbon recycled concrete aggregate (RCA) and CLEANCO2 carbon storage concrete bricks to reduce the embodied carbon in Hang Lung’s Westlake 66 development in Hangzhou and other projects. Westlake 66 is also the first commercial development project to use low-carbon concrete bricks in mainland China and Hong Kong.
The embodied carbon associated with buildings, which covers the carbon emissions created by the extraction, transportation, construction, maintenance, replacement, demolition, and disposal of building materials, contributes 11% of global carbon emissions and approximately 75% of a building’s total emissions over a typical 60-year lifetime. Its impact is fixed at the time of construction and can not be reduced once the building is constructed.
Embodied carbon constitutes a major source of Scope 3 emissions – i.e., indirect emissions that occur along a company’s value chain – for real estate companies. In 2022, Hang Lung’s Scope 3 emissions were about 72% of its overall emissions, with embodied carbon emissions from building materials its largest source of emissions. Hang Lung is squarely confronting embodied carbon reduction and the importance of having strategic collaboration partners to work together.
The technology developed by CLEANCO2 originated from the State Key Laboratory of Clean Energy Utilization (CEU) of Zhejiang University. In 2020, as a supported R&D project under the 13(th) Five-Year Plan, the “Key Technologies of CO(2) Deep Mineralization Curing Building Materials and 10,000-ton Industrial Demonstration” was completed by Zhejiang University. Since 2020, CLEANCO2 has officially cooperated with CEU. They have jointly undertaken several national and local research and development projects related to CCUS technology and jointly built the “Zhejiang University – CLEANCO2 United Laboratory of CO(2) Mineralization Utilization Technology”, the first CO(2) mineralization utilization experimental base in China with potential to achieve large-scale industrial production globally.
