Serious Materials Could Cut US Carbon Footprint
IfÂ Serious Materials made every interior wall and window in the US, it would make a real dent in the national carbon footprint, because the company turns out an 80% more energy efficient drywall or sheet rock that does not emit greenhouse gases in production, and its Serious Windows are better insulated than most US walls.
Gypsum mining is a major source of carbon dioxide emissions because manufacturing it requires that it be intensely heated using fossil fuels. Every building in the US has gypsum in its sheet rock or dry wall. A typical gypsum drywall plant can consume up to two trillion BTUâ€™s of natural gas a year.
By comparison, Serious Materials EcoRock needs no heat to cure. It is made using 80% post-industrial recycled waste, even waste from steel and cement plants. These changes cut EcoRock’s carbon footprint 80% over the ubiquitous gypsum dry wall.
Nevertheless, traditional builders balk at any change, especially one this disruptive.
The US did not sign the Kyoto Accord, requiring nations to reduce their carbon footprint, so it has yet to create the cap and trade market that creates funding to pay for energy efficiency tech, as Europe did with the European Trading System, so the US now lags a decade behind Europe in developing energy efficient technology.
As a result, Serious Materials has virtually no competition in the US for its energy efficient residential building products. But that is beginning to change. The US is finally getting serious about insulation and retrofitting its buildings to go from gas guzzlers to energy misers.
The Wall Street Journal awarded the company its Environmental Leader Award last summer, and the Obama Administration has just awarded the small start-up one of its green manufacturing tax credits to add permanentÂ jobs running production lines to make the environmentally clean sheet rock that could build a much lower carbon America for the next 50 years.