Concrete is an essential material for the development of human societies and its success has made it the most widely used building mate- rial in the world. Indeed, concrete is an indispensable material for making buildings, roads, bridges, tunnels, water treatment facilities, drink- able water distribution networks, dams, ports, and infrastructure for public transport (metros, trains, airports and many other facilities). To respond to the demand for all those services to society, more than 10 billion m3 of concrete are utilized each year across the world. This is equivalent to about 1.5 m3 per person per year. Although concrete’s embodied energy and carbon footprint is low per m3, the volume con- sumed to meet construction needs over the world makes it a major contributor to global CO2 emissions. It is essential to keep on reducing this global footprint. In the last decades, concrete has made considerable progress both technically and aesthetically. Concrete is fully adapted to today’s needs and the industry is improving to better respond to tomorrow’s challenges. It is a modern, contem- porary material in constant evolution and very well suited for sustainable buildings. For example, new high-, and ultra-high strength con- cretes have been developed over the past few decades enabling new architectural expressions while remaining very resource efficient.
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