As trade dynamics shift and tariffs reshape supply chains, construction companies must rethink how they source materials, balance costs, and integrate sustainable solutions. The push for greener, more resilient construction materials is at the heart of this transformation. Grant Quasha, CEO of Eco Material Technologies, returns to the show to share an update. Since his last appearance in October 2023, the company has made significant strides—including securing an $800 million Green Term Loan Facility, which will significantly accelerate the development and adoption of low-carbon cement alternatives. With goals to double production to 20 million tons per year, Grant and his team are working to redefine how we build the world around us.
Hear what sustainable business sounds like when a green product makes its case on economic terms. Adopting green materials becomes a no-brainer decision when they are cheaper and better (because pozzolanic concrete lasts longer) and deliver the sustainability consumers want. Grant explains the potential for using low-carbon concrete to build low-income housing, for which Americans are in severe need due to a shortage of 7.1 million affordable housing units. Providing climate-resilient housing is a potentially vast opportunity to drive the rapid adoption of low-carbon concrete. Concrete printing systems can be rolled up to a home site and complete the production of a house in hours, saving labor time spent on framing a traditional home. If you’re considering starting a sustainable company, consider 3D concrete printed construction as a business. There are only 32 of these construction companies in the U.S. That may be the entrepreneurial opportunity of the decade. Imagine the demand for affordable, fast homes just in LA. So, business goes on, and sustainability is on the menu. You can learn more about Eco Material Technologies at ecomaterial.com.
Hear what sustainable business sounds like when a green product makes its case on economic terms. Adopting green materials becomes a no-brainer decision when they are cheaper and better (because pozzolanic concrete lasts longer) and deliver the sustainability consumers want. Grant explains the potential for using low-carbon concrete to build low-income housing, for which Americans are in severe need due to a shortage of 7.1 million affordable housing units. Providing climate-resilient housing is a potentially vast opportunity to drive the rapid adoption of low-carbon concrete. Concrete printing systems can be rolled up to a home site and complete the production of a house in hours, saving labor time spent on framing a traditional home. If you’re considering starting a sustainable company, consider 3D concrete printed construction as a business. There are only 32 of these construction companies in the U.S. That may be the entrepreneurial opportunity of the decade. Imagine the demand for affordable, fast homes just in LA. So, business goes on, and sustainability is on the menu. You can learn more about Eco Material Technologies at ecomaterial.com.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hello, good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you
are on this beautiful planet of ours. Welcome to Sustainability
in Your Ear, the podcast conversation about accelerating the transition
to a sustainable carbon neutral society. And I'm your host, Mettrakliffe.
Thanks for joining the conversation today. It's going to be
a good one. We've got a guest returning. The global
construction and infrastructure industries are at a pivotal moment as
(00:31):
trade dynamics shift and tariffs reshaped supply chains. Companies are
being forced to rethink how they source materials, balance costs,
and integrate sustainable solutions. And at the heart of this
transformation is a push for greener, more resilient construction materials.
And I'm pleased to welcome back to the show Grant Quasha,
CEO of Eco material Technologies. Eco Materials is at the
(00:55):
forefront of decarbonizing the cement industry. Since his last appearance
in October twenty twenty three, Grant's company has made major
strides including securing an eight hundred million dollars green term
loan facility, a move that will significantly accelerate the development
and an adoption of low carbon cement alternatives, with goals
to double production to twenty million tons per year. Grant
(01:18):
and his team are working to redefine how we build
the world around us, and their concrete is about eighty
percent less carbon intensive than the concrete that we've been using,
which accounts for six percent of global annual CO two emissions.
So we're going to dig into how Eco Materials Technologies
is navigating economic uncertainty, evolving trade policies, and the urgent
(01:40):
need for a domestic supply chain resilience in concrete. We'll
also discuss the broader implications of those tariffs on sustainable construction,
the role of green innovation in shaping the industry's future,
and how businesses and policy makers can work together to
drive long term change. You can learn more about ecomterial
Technologies at ecomterials dot com. And that is one word,
(02:01):
no space, no dash. We'll get to the conversation right
after this brief commercial break. Welcome back to the show. Grant,
how you doing today?
Speaker 2 (02:13):
I'm doing well, Mitch, Thanks for having me again.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
You're making a lot of interesting moves and I want
to talk about a lot of them. But first, can
you remind everybody what pozsolonic cement invented by the Romans
does compare to the traditional Portland cement we use in
most of the construction that we do.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Certainly so. Traditional Portland cement was invented about two hundred
years ago and it is a very industrial process that
has a lot of emissions associated with it. It's a
very effective and efficient way to make concrete. It's the
glue that makes concrete. Pozsolonic cement, essentially what we do
and what others do and the Romans did, reduces the
(02:51):
amount of Portland cement that you need in your mixture,
and instead you put in posolonic based materials like coal ash,
like volcanic ash, and those materials have three real benefits
when you put them into the mix. The first benefit
is they make the concrete stronger and last longer. The
second one is that they have virtually no emissions associated
(03:13):
with them. When you produce a ton of Portland cement,
you basically admit about a ton of CO two. When
you produce a ton of ash, you emit very little
CO two, if sometimes none at all. That there is
a cost advantage as well.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
The other thing about this is you can use industrial
byproducts like fly ash, which could even mean that we
could clean up industrial sites and make low carbon cement.
I mean, are you finding more sources of those materials?
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Absolutely, So you hit on it. There's a double environmental benefit, right,
which is, not only are you reducing the emissions that
you would have in the creation of the concrete, you're
in many cases helping clean up former waste sites. And so,
as we sort of mentioned in our previous conversation, there's
about two billion tons of landfilled coal ash in the
(04:00):
United States and it's a potential problem. A lot of
those are in unlined landfills, and coal ash is fantastic
when you put it in concrete, it's not so great
when it's just lying in heaps on the ground and
in ponds. So by cleaning those up, we're able to
really help local communities and improve the environmental footprint of
(04:23):
concrete that we need for our infrastructure.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
So how much does posolonic cement reduce the carbon emissions
associated in general? And can you kind of paint a
picture of how far you think we can take just
construct the construction industry just based on using this kind
of cement towards the net zero goal.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Sure, So traditionally poslonic materials like fly ash have been
used around twenty to twenty five percent in the mixtures
with cement for concrete. Right, so, decent levels, but you know,
not the largest ingredient. What we and others are working
on is how do we take that twenty to twenty
(05:04):
five percent and come up with, on the one hand,
more of those materials because overall today in the US
we're more like fifteen percent on average, Right, we should
get that at least back up to twenty twenty five percent.
And then once we get there, how do we increase
that to fifty seventy five closer to one hundred percent,
And you know, we have products that can go all
(05:25):
the way to one hundred percent. You know, today the
market is still not really in a position where it
necessarily needs or is willing to pay for those types
of products. But frankly, the white space for US is
really two tiered. The products that we sell today that
are cost competitive or less expensive than traditional materials are
at that twenty twenty five percent level, which we need
(05:46):
to get to full stop first, and then our fifty
percent products are cost competitive as well, so to my mind.
You know, the lowest hanging fruit is getting to that
fifty percent, and then we can push beyond that the
next stage. But right now we've got the materials, we've
got the technology that fifty plus percent is very, very achievable.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Now, last time we talked to you, we also we're
just starting to work with various local concrete production facilities.
How many are you working with now and what's your
goal for, say the end of twenty twenty five in
terms of geographic coverage in the United States?
Speaker 2 (06:25):
Sure, so, you know we've expanded, you know, the number
of folks were selling our products too, So now we're
up to about we have about six thousand unique customers
in the concrete space in about forty six states, which
is great. We're national, we're looking to expand you know,
my goal is to have us in all fifty major
metropolitan areas in the US within the next couple of years.
(06:49):
We're opening up some exciting new locations. You know, we're
having a ceremony next month for our first big facility
in New York, which will be in Long Island City.
That's a market that's traditionally hasn't had access to our
types of materials and we're going to be bringing them
in and folks are really excited about that. And then
on top of that, we are growing our advanced manufacturing
(07:10):
and harvesting facilities pretty significantly. So this year we just
opened up our newest facility harvesting material in northwest Florida.
We have a new natural pozzle and green cement facility
opening up in the next couple months in Oregon, and
then later this year we've got another ash harvesting facility
in Georgia and one in Alabama that will be opening.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
A lot of progress. Now, you've just closed recently in
February an eight hundred million dollar green term loan facility.
How's that going to accelerate your progress?
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Yeah, that was a great process. I'm always cheered when
we go to the market and talk to folks about
our business because, you know, it's a quirky one, it's
a little niche, but when people do the work around it,
they realize, you know, it's an amazing one. In the
fact that we have such big impact as far as decarbonization,
we can actually still make money, which is great. Right,
(08:01):
So obviously people are loaning us money. They want to
make sure they're going to get paid back. And we
went into the market to raise more money to fund
more growth, more of those projects like I described, and
the market was very receptive. We were heavily oversubscribed. You know,
we probably had three billion dollars worth of orders, and
we were able to raise more money and lower our
(08:21):
interest rate and turn out our debt for another seven years.
So we've basically got a facility we don't have to
touch for the next seven years, you know. We you know,
it's a little bit over seven percent in our interest costs,
which is you know, great for a company of our size,
and was really a nice validation in the progress that
we've made and the growth that we've been able to achieve.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
What's really impressive is you're doing this not to make
a pun but organically, this is growing out of demand
for low carbon concrete and doubling production to like twenty
million tons per year is really ambitious. Are there? Do
you need support from polishy makers, uh, for instance, with
mandates for low carbon construction, or it's just just gonna
(09:05):
happen on its own.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
A lot of it can happen on its own, you know, honestly,
you know, we've obviously had a change in administrations. Uh,
and a lot of folks you know, would say to me, oh,
are you really concerned about this changing the administrations is less
of a focus on on on on decarbonization, et cetera,
et cetera. And I'd say, actually not not particularly. You know,
the previous administration you know, really wanted to push you know, uh,
(09:30):
decarbonization of infrastructure. But honestly, the federal government has not
so many levers as you would think. It's really state
based on what happens, and so that hasn't really changed
that much. I don't think there's gonna be a lot
of monies for you know, for you know, like the
IRA et cetera, going forward for the next four years.
But there may actually be a silver lining in the
(09:51):
fact that, you know, the previous administration, while very focused
on pushing you know, obviously a greener agenda, when it
came to coal ash, they were a little bit scared,
right because you hear coal ash, you hear coal, and
if you hear coal and you're a very green focus,
then you, oh, I you can't have anything to do
with that, you know. And obviously we have to take
the time to say listen, we're not burning the coal,
We're cleaning up what was you know, made before, and
(10:14):
we're actually turning what was a problem into a solution.
And so the newer administration, to be honest, is and
you saw this with some of what they may do
with the EPA, I think they're going to act on
a lot of these coal ash regulations to make it
a lot easier to harvest and beneficially use a lot
of these waste stockpiles. So I honestly think that if
(10:34):
it happens, will have a really positive impact, because there
are some vagaries around the rule making in the EPA
today that actually when we go in to try and
harvest ash, we kind of have one hand tie behind
our back, and it'd be great to you know, you know,
be able to do that, you know a lot more effectively.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
There's two facets of how the Trump administration talks about
the climate that I want to ask about. They kind
of put a stink on it, and certainly they ban
the word or the phrase climate change in their communication.
But does that also potentially put you at a disadvantage
when you're bidding on a project, do you have to
change the language that you use the way that people
(11:15):
are talking about changing their DEI language.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
I don't think we really change the language we use.
What I would say is that, you know, our business
and our products have so many positive attributes we'll shift,
we shift sometimes to what attributes we're going to highlight. Right,
So one of the attributes, several of the tributes that
we have that is I think very appealing to this
administration is that we're a domestic producer, were building domestic
(11:38):
manufacturing facilities, We're hiring people for jobs. We are helping
clean up the coal industry and make it more sustainable.
Those are really positive things, especially in an environment where
the incremental semintitious material in the market other than what
we're creating now with these new harvesting projects is important. Right.
It's imported cement or steal slag that's coming from China,
(12:00):
it's coming from Turkey, it's coming from all over the world, right,
and that is not you know, with obviously all the
tariff stuff going on those international supply chains, we don't
think are as robust as an environmentally beneficial or beneficial
to the US manufacturing sector than our domestic supply chains,
which are much more resilient and frankly, you know, fit
(12:21):
into America first. Whether or not that's something that you
really are harping on, it just happens to be the
situation that we're in, so and we don't need a
green premium. We sell competitively, right, and so we can
sell a greener product at a better price, and so
there's no reason why we shouldn't be able to succeed.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
It's interesting that you bring the green premium up because
it seems at least it was fading. Does that motivate
states to put regulations in place requiring lower carbon construction
materials or at this point, is it just a wash
there's no need for stimulus.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
It depends. I think, you know, there are a couple
of statesily California, who are going to take this opportunity
to to likely redouble their efforts to mandate more of
these materials, and I think that's positive for US and
others in the industry. It doesn't have to happen, but
it is. It is positive. So you know, we're supportive
of that when it's done correctly. You know, obviously, like
(13:17):
with any regulation, you know, sometimes there can be pitfalls
in the way that it's enacted versus the way that
the industry really works, and so sometimes good to be
careful about that. But you know, in general, I think
states are are going to keep pushing. I think the
other big change in the market in the last six
twelve months is data centers. You know, it's interesting. I
was looking at a chart the other day and it
(13:38):
shows on one line traditional office buildings and how much
are being constructed. On the other line data centers. And
my hands are converging here, right, And basically, you know,
one of my colleagues was joking to me, when you
look at the chart, data centers are almost almost catching
where traditional office is because traditional office going down, data
center skyrocketing. He says, this when we realize that, you know,
(14:00):
we're making more homes for computers or offices for computers
than we are making offices for humans. Right, this is
when the computers won. But the point is that those
are very concrete intensive, and the Magnificent seven, Yeah, they
may have walked back from a lot of their DII
initiatives and their ESG induatives, but they're still really focused
on limiting the impact of these facilities, and the best
(14:21):
way to do that is to use more SEMs like
ours like coal ash. So there's been a big push
for usage of these materials in those construction projects.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
It's really encouraged me to here. And there's a lot
to dig into on this, but we need to take
a quick commercial break. We're going to be right back now.
Let's get back to the conversation with Grant Quashia. He's
CEO of the low carbon concrete supplier Eco Materials Technology,
and he is saying a lot of really interesting things
(14:50):
about the impact of the Trump administration, and I want
to dig a little past Trump and what they're doing
to overall global trade tensions that are re all of
these tariffs that we're talking about. Do you see tariffs
on construction materials being a barrier to your growth or
an opportunity for you to grow? Could you, for instance,
could you license your technology into another country?
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Absolutely? So, you know, as we kind of covered a
bit earlier, tariffs can be challenging in a number of ways.
But as a domestic producer in an industry that has
a lot of important material tariffs are actually beneficial for
us in the US, and we think further highlight this
resilience of a domestic supply chain that also helps clean
up community. So, you know, we think that that can
(15:34):
be a positive thing. That said, you know, I don't
know where all that's going to shake out. I don't
think anybody knows where all that's going to shake out.
On the international side, You're absolutely right. We have started
to do some more work thinking about how do we
effectively roll out some more of this technology into other
parts of the world where it is, you know, we
(15:55):
think very beneficial. The good or the bad thing about
ASH is that it's everywhere, and so we have the
ability to go to Poland, to go to South Africa,
to go to Korea, and to do what we're doing
here there now to an extent, there are others that
are doing similar type stuff to what we're doing in
other national locations. However, our higher technology, our green cement products,
(16:18):
those types of things, those are things where we can
go in either you know, we're likely we're an American company,
We're likely to remain mostly focused here. It's not going
to be a build, owned and operate a strategy. Likely
in the international space, Like you said, it's probably more
of a joint venture or a licensing type situation where
we find a partner who can really benefit from our
(16:41):
technology and know how, and we work together to try
to expand that. And I just hit a couple of
the markets that I think could be good.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
You know.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
One of the other markets is super interesting, is obviously
a complicated today is Ukraine. Hopefully at some point there's
a cessation in hostilities there. They have a huge amount
of coal ash and they have a huge amount of
infrastructure to rebuild, so that could be an interesting opportunity.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
Let's talk a little bit. Concrete production is a local thing,
but suppley supplementary simentatious materials. You got to take time
to say that, right, is something that is made and
then distributed to these local production facilities. Can you talk
about how local this business really is and will it
continue to be more local or are we globalizing in
(17:25):
some sense?
Speaker 2 (17:27):
You know, fifty years ago at the start of the industry,
when one of our first predecessor companies in the late
nineteen sixties, a company called Dayton fly Ash started moving
fly ash, it was extremely local, right, and it stayed
extremely local, you know for a long long time, right,
the value of the material was so low that it
didn't make sense to move it around. Now, for all
(17:48):
the reasons that we've talked about, the value of the
material is higher, and you know, logistics have become somewhat
more efficient, and so folks like ourselves have invested massively
in logistics infrastructure to move this stuff and take it
from a local to a regional and almost a national
and international space. Now, so whereas you know today we
(18:12):
ship you know, hundreds of thousands of tons from the
Midwest from Illinois to California, right, that's almost two thousand miles, right,
and we make that work economically for ourselves and our partners.
So you know that is not the most efficient way
to use these materials, right. The most efficient way is
to serve the local market first. But oftentimes the local
market get is saturated, right, and you need options to
(18:34):
move out further. And so with efficient rail, which is
one of the amazing things that our country has that
people don't necessarily always realize. We have an amazing rail system,
and we have an amazing river system. We use barges
as well, super efficient ways. And you need to be
efficient because you can't you can't fetex this stuff and
put it in a plane, right that and then the
third piece is the is the international seaborne market. People
(18:57):
are importing ash into s cms into the US. The
majority of the supply of granulated blast furnace steel slag,
which is a competing SCM. We don't produce any of it,
but think of fly ash coming from a coal plant
to steel slag coming from a big steel furnace. Right.
We don't have a lot of these big steel furnaces
(19:19):
anymore in the US, but there's lots of them in Asia,
and so they're sending a lot of this steel slag,
which acts a lot like fly ash as a supplementary
semititious material. And it's international trade and it's growing significantly now.
It's mostly going to coastal areas, you know, southern Florida, Houston,
Ship Channel, parts of the West coast, but it is
(19:39):
it's definitely turning into a lot more of a globalized trade.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
Concrete is the second most used human material after water,
which is an astonishing thought when you when you stop
and think about it.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
Yeah, no, And it's the statistic that I love is
that every year we pour third thirty billion tons of concrete.
So that means for every man, woman and child, you're
pouring like four tons of concrete that's eight thousand pounds
per person. It's an astoundingly large amount and it really
(20:15):
speaks to the fact that this is it's one of
those it's one of those industries that you know, people
don't tend to think a lot about, but once you
do think about it, it's everywhere.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
It gives a different meaning to the word infrastructure for sure. Yes,
the thinking about that, how do you get architects and
the folks who are designing highways and freeways and data
centers to engage with the idea of using low carbon concrete.
Are you integrating with their planning tools for instance, making it,
(20:48):
making it available, and they're building information management system so
that they can project the potential savings.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
You know? That is that is something that we continue
to work on. I think it generally it starts with
the state Department of Transportation because they tend to act
as the first sort of good housekeeping seal of approval.
If you are on the approved list for critical infrastructure
within a state, right whether they be EPCs or architects
or whatever, they can look at that and you can
point to that and say, listen, this stuff. Is this
(21:14):
stuff safe enough to make a bridge span it's safe
enough for your for your residential complex or what have you.
Then the next thing is really just being proactive, whether
it's with industry associations, whether with big companies, big EPCs
and what have you, and just letting you know, sharing
more information, more test results, more spec sheets, more case studies.
(21:36):
You know I you know, for example, you know I
mentioned earlier, but you know, a big effort that I
and we've been making recently is with companies that are
building data centers and saying, you know, here's how you
here's here's who we are. You probably don't know us,
but you should, and you're probably actually using a lot
of our materials, but you know, you should be more
thoughtful about that and maybe more proactive and use more
(21:58):
and here's how we can work together. It's et cetera.
So honestly, it's a lot of handholding, and it starts
at least for us anyway. We're in a really good
position because our traditional products have been in the market
for decades and have been trusted for decades, and so
when we bring in newer products, it's really just it's
it's it's it's the iPhone seventeen. Right, Oh, you like
(22:20):
the iPhone sixteen. Right, well, here's the iPhone seventeen. It's
a little bit better, it's a little bit you know,
more efficient, it's a better environmentally et cetera. But it's
got all the same things that you're used to in
the iPhone sixteen.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
Are the data center companies looking for carbon credit opportunities?
Can you write down certain costs because you can take
a carbon credit against the fact that you used a
low concrete or low carbon concrete.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
I can't say that I've necessarily heard of that. What
I can say is that, you know, often the folks
that are developing the data centers are not the end users,
right They'll.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
No, they're not.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
They'll they'll be there'll be some development company, but they
will lease these to Google, to to you know, to
to to Facebook or whomever. And those folks when they're
in the process of doing that, you know, leasing and
providing that service, having that lower embedded emissions profile, I
(23:18):
think is a real selling point and hopefully is a
way that they can make more money and you know,
provide perhaps a competitive advantage for somebody else who hasn't
done that. Additionally, there's just there's cost benefits for our
regular materials. For the regular fly ash we we we manufacture,
it's still you know, usually twenty or thirty percent cheaper
(23:38):
than just using cement, So you know, there'll be cost
savings for them as well, just just as as there
would be if you were building a road with our material.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
Gosh, just competing on the economic factors, no emotion. It
really it strips away a lot of the passion people feel.
And you just get down to this raw material that
we're building almost all of society with. It changes your
perspective on how we talk about this as a you know,
making the business case for sustainability. It isn't even necessary
(24:08):
based on the way you're describing.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
No, and then the other thing that people always seem
to harp on and people and I get it because
it's a niche space and the data is hard to
come by, but I hear all the time, you know,
well ash is running out, fly ash is running out.
We've got to come up with other solutions. There's got
to be new new things we need to do. And
I just and my answer is that no, we're actually
entering a new golden age of ash. We are. You know,
(24:32):
there's there's at least three big levers that are being
pulled right now. One is a little counterintuitive. One is actually,
because of the Trump administration, coal plants are shutting a
lot slower than they were. Right A lot of these
utilities are pushing out, and a lot of this is
driven by power demand. In AI, they're pushing out retirement.
So fresh ash is not going away as quickly as
(24:53):
people think. It is. The harvesting et cetera that we're
doing and others are doing ramping up dramatically fast. You know,
it's going up thirty forty percent a year in production.
And then you've got natural puzzlins as well that are
in the mix. We are going to have so much ash. Actually, folks,
you know, don't need we don't need to reinvent the wheel.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
Here.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
There's people with cool technologies that are that are making
SEMs out of interesting stuff, and I think wish them
well and I hope that's great. But the nice thing
is that we actually have cracked the code on how
to make the materials we've already been using for decades
even last even longer and produce even more so we
can get to those higher replacement rates.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
So where do you see the construction industry and particularly
in its use of concrete. In five years, is it
one hundred percent more, five hundred percent more? What's the
pace of growth that we should be looking for.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
So I think you'll see in ash. I think in
the next five years, I think we should go from
about a fifteen percent replacement rate to about twenty which
is significant. So that's about a you know, a thirty
three percent increase. But where you'll see significant growth is
in harvesting. So you're going to see last year, by
my numbers, there are about two million tons a year
(26:08):
of ash that was harvested from landfills. By the end
of this decade, that'll be closer to eight or nine
million tons a year, and so that is going to increase,
you know, close to fivefold, and that is going to
be the biggest change in the industry VISA vs. CMS
that I see. On the margin, you'll have some other
changes as well. I think you'll have some more imports
(26:29):
coming in, mostly of steel slag, so there'll be some
more imports there. You'll have some new technologies that are
coming out. A company called terra Co two is coming
up with basically like a synthetic version of fly ash.
They all start with some production, but those are pretty
small when you consider they're looking to build one hundred
thousand ton of year facilities and I'm talking about million
(26:49):
tons of year facilities that are coming on line for harvesting,
et cetera. So I think you're going to see, like
I said, you know, a golden age in ash and SCMS,
and it's really going to start taken off in the
next five years or so. In fact, you know, I've
been you know, I've been preaching this for a while.
Somebody started listening. About four months ago. McKinsey put a
report out and it was about the next decade in
(27:11):
cement and they said that the next decade in cement
will be dominated by SCMS. So hopefully people get you know,
I even stumble over the words sometimes too, but get
used to saying supplementary, semintitious materials, the rain.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
And spain falls mainly on the plane. It's almost the same.
You know, you look across the construction industry generally, are
there other areas you think there are opportunities for improvement?
I mean, maybe not eco material to going after it,
but what else should entrepreneurs be looking at as opportunities
to lower the carbon intensity of our built environment.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
Yes, absolutely, I think, you know, I think efficiency is
really just the lowest is some of the lowest hanging fruit,
right is making sure that you know, we're doing more
with less. I think there's been a lot of efforts
in that recycling of of waste construction material. Those are
all helpful. But for me, you know, I think the
biggest issue that you know, putting aside critical infrastructure, which
(28:12):
we need to reinvest in and as always needs more investment,
and AI and non non resp we look at residential housing.
That's the biggest issue I see for this country for
the next ten to twenty years, which is how do
we have reasonably costed, sustainable and good quality, resilient housing
(28:34):
stock put in place. It's a super hard question, and
it's a super one. That's really, I think, more than
any other issue in construction, hits the average American every
day in their pocketbook, in their experience, which is, I
want to be able to afford a good quality home
that I can live in it, and I can afford
and I don't have to worry about, you know, floods
(28:55):
and wildfires and hurricanes and all this sort of stuff
that may be coming may be exacerbated by things that
are happening the climate. One answer to that, which has
been on the come for a long time is three
D printing of homes with greener material, and we're involved
in that, and we supply a really high quality material
to home three D printing, and we actually this year
we're breaking ground on what will be the largest project
(29:18):
from a municipality's perspective in three D home printing, will
be printing between fifty and eighty homes in the city
of Houston. These will be affordable homes. They'll start about
two hundred thousand dollars, they will be very high quality
twenty five hundred square feet, and they'll really be cost
efficient and they'll be really resilient. So it's stuff like
that that I see and I think, Wow, you know,
(29:39):
if we can get this right, you can address that problem,
which I really think is the number one thing that
the average American worries about when they think about construction.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
I think you're right, and we've been launching the three
D printed home, particularly concrete print at home for several
years with a lot of interest. Do you think that's
a is that a building methodology that is sufficiently just
distributed for this to happen rapidly. Or is that the
entrepreneurial opportunity to start a construction company around three D printing.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
I think that's the opportunity. I think there's I think
technologically people have had fits and starts, but I think
it's been to my mind, I've seen it proven that
it can be done. How to do it at scale
and efficiently is the real challenge, because there's not really
anybody out there doing that right now, and we stand
ready to help. You know, we've been tailoring our recipes
(30:29):
in some of our green cement projects to make it
easier for these things to work, and to make it
cost efficient too. Right, there's a price point at which
it makes sense for someone to print a house out
of concrete, and then there's a price point where it
makes sense that doesn't make sense anymore, right, And so
we as an industry, if we want to make that happen,
we've got to make sure that we control our cost
efficiently so that it makes sense. And so far as
(30:51):
the future goes, I'm optimistic. That said, you know, the
construction industry moves slowly, so it will take time.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
Grant. It's always inspiring him pragmatic to talk to you.
How can folks keep up on what you're doing?
Speaker 2 (31:06):
Thanks, Mitch, I appreciate your time and you have some
great questions. Best way to do it is to follow
me on LinkedIn Grant Quasha q U A s h A,
or to check us out on ecomateial dot com. That's
e c O M A T E R I A
L dot com.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
Well great, thanks very much for spending time with us today, Grant,
it's been fascinating.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
Take care of miss Thank.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
You you've been listening to a conversation with Grant Quasha.
He is CEO of Eco Material Technologies about that company's
low carbon potzolonic concrete that was invented by the Romans,
by the way, and that can be made out of
industrial waste such as fly ash, allowing us to clean
(31:52):
up even super fun sites while building affordable homes. It's
really something when you think about it, and you can
learn more about Ecomterial Technologies at ecomterial dot com. Ecomterial
is all one word, no space, no dash, and I
think what we've just heard is what sustainable business sounds
like when it's made its case on purely economic terms.
(32:14):
The growing focus on sustainability among businesses who are often
driven by their desire to police consumers who are overwhelmingly
concerned about the environment, will be consolidated and become the
norm as products like ecomterial technologies, concrete becomes widely available
when a material is cheaper better. That's because potzolonic concrete
lasts longer than Portland cement, and also that product checks
(32:38):
the sustainability box, adoption becomes a no brainer decision. Grants
challenge may be getting supplies of fly ash closer to
the thirty four hundred or so companies that make ready
mixed concrete and the ninety six locations that produce wet
concrete for use in large scale construction projects. What we're
talking about is an incredibly local business, one that has
only about ninety minutes or three hundred rebus ills of
(33:00):
the mixer after water is added to the dry mix
before it can no longer be used because the concrete
has started to set and loses its ability to be worked.
We have to get this done quick, and we have
to get it done locally. The potential for low income housing,
for which Americans are in severe need due to a
shortage of more than seven point one million units of
affordable housing. Is potentially a vast opportunity to drive rapid
(33:23):
adoption of low carbon concrete. As Grant mentioned, eco material
concrete is being used to print homes in the Houston area,
but think about the need for fire resistant homes made
of concrete in the urban wilderness interface, or as we've
recently learned in the Los Angeles basin. Concrete printing systems
can be rolled up to a home site and complete
(33:44):
the production of a house in hours, saving labor time
usually spent on framing. And that's just the start of
the benefits. If you're thinking about starting a sustainable company,
consider three D concrete printed construction as a business. There
are only thirty two of these construction companies in the
United Slime States. That may be the entrepreneurial opportunity of
the decade. I mean, imagine the demand for affordable, fast
(34:06):
homes just in Los Angeles. So you know what we've
learned is business is just going on and sustainability is
on the menu. Will continue to track this topic and
if you are a three D concrete printing company, drop
me a line. About talking with me on the show.
Speaking of the show, would you take a moment to
look at any of the more than five hundred episodes
of Sustainability in Your Ear that we've produced and sharing
(34:29):
them with your friends. Folks, by writing review on your
favorite podcast platform, you'll help your neighbors find us. You
are the amplifiers that can spread more ideas to create
less waste. Tell your friends, family, and coworkers, the people
you meet on the street that they can find us
on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Audible, or any purveyor of
(34:49):
podcast goodness that they prefer. Thank you so much for
your support. I'm Mettrackliff. This is Sustainability in Your Ear
and we will be back with another innovator interview soon.
In the meantime, folks, take care of yourself, take care
of one another, and let's all take care of this
beautiful planet of ours. Have a green day.
Hello, good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you
are on this beautiful planet of ours. Welcome to Sustainability
in Your Ear, the podcast conversation about accelerating the transition
to a sustainable carbon neutral society. And I'm your host, Mettrakliffe.
Thanks for joining the conversation today. It's going to be
a good one. We've got a guest returning. The global
construction and infrastructure industries are at a pivotal moment as
(00:31):
trade dynamics shift and tariffs reshaped supply chains. Companies are
being forced to rethink how they source materials, balance costs,
and integrate sustainable solutions. And at the heart of this
transformation is a push for greener, more resilient construction materials.
And I'm pleased to welcome back to the show Grant Quasha,
CEO of Eco material Technologies. Eco Materials is at the
(00:55):
forefront of decarbonizing the cement industry. Since his last appearance
in October twenty twenty three, Grant's company has made major
strides including securing an eight hundred million dollars green term
loan facility, a move that will significantly accelerate the development
and an adoption of low carbon cement alternatives, with goals
to double production to twenty million tons per year. Grant
(01:18):
and his team are working to redefine how we build
the world around us, and their concrete is about eighty
percent less carbon intensive than the concrete that we've been using,
which accounts for six percent of global annual CO two emissions.
So we're going to dig into how Eco Materials Technologies
is navigating economic uncertainty, evolving trade policies, and the urgent
(01:40):
need for a domestic supply chain resilience in concrete. We'll
also discuss the broader implications of those tariffs on sustainable construction,
the role of green innovation in shaping the industry's future,
and how businesses and policy makers can work together to
drive long term change. You can learn more about ecomterial
Technologies at ecomterials dot com. And that is one word,
(02:01):
no space, no dash. We'll get to the conversation right
after this brief commercial break. Welcome back to the show. Grant,
how you doing today?
Speaker 2 (02:13):
I'm doing well, Mitch, Thanks for having me again.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
You're making a lot of interesting moves and I want
to talk about a lot of them. But first, can
you remind everybody what pozsolonic cement invented by the Romans
does compare to the traditional Portland cement we use in
most of the construction that we do.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Certainly so. Traditional Portland cement was invented about two hundred
years ago and it is a very industrial process that
has a lot of emissions associated with it. It's a
very effective and efficient way to make concrete. It's the
glue that makes concrete. Pozsolonic cement, essentially what we do
and what others do and the Romans did, reduces the
(02:51):
amount of Portland cement that you need in your mixture,
and instead you put in posolonic based materials like coal ash,
like volcanic ash, and those materials have three real benefits
when you put them into the mix. The first benefit
is they make the concrete stronger and last longer. The
second one is that they have virtually no emissions associated
(03:13):
with them. When you produce a ton of Portland cement,
you basically admit about a ton of CO two. When
you produce a ton of ash, you emit very little
CO two, if sometimes none at all. That there is
a cost advantage as well.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
The other thing about this is you can use industrial
byproducts like fly ash, which could even mean that we
could clean up industrial sites and make low carbon cement.
I mean, are you finding more sources of those materials?
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Absolutely, So you hit on it. There's a double environmental benefit, right,
which is, not only are you reducing the emissions that
you would have in the creation of the concrete, you're
in many cases helping clean up former waste sites. And so,
as we sort of mentioned in our previous conversation, there's
about two billion tons of landfilled coal ash in the
(04:00):
United States and it's a potential problem. A lot of
those are in unlined landfills, and coal ash is fantastic
when you put it in concrete, it's not so great
when it's just lying in heaps on the ground and
in ponds. So by cleaning those up, we're able to
really help local communities and improve the environmental footprint of
(04:23):
concrete that we need for our infrastructure.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
So how much does posolonic cement reduce the carbon emissions
associated in general? And can you kind of paint a
picture of how far you think we can take just
construct the construction industry just based on using this kind
of cement towards the net zero goal.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Sure, So traditionally poslonic materials like fly ash have been
used around twenty to twenty five percent in the mixtures
with cement for concrete. Right, so, decent levels, but you know,
not the largest ingredient. What we and others are working
on is how do we take that twenty to twenty
(05:04):
five percent and come up with, on the one hand,
more of those materials because overall today in the US
we're more like fifteen percent on average, Right, we should
get that at least back up to twenty twenty five percent.
And then once we get there, how do we increase
that to fifty seventy five closer to one hundred percent,
And you know, we have products that can go all
(05:25):
the way to one hundred percent. You know, today the
market is still not really in a position where it
necessarily needs or is willing to pay for those types
of products. But frankly, the white space for US is
really two tiered. The products that we sell today that
are cost competitive or less expensive than traditional materials are
at that twenty twenty five percent level, which we need
(05:46):
to get to full stop first, and then our fifty
percent products are cost competitive as well, so to my mind.
You know, the lowest hanging fruit is getting to that
fifty percent, and then we can push beyond that the
next stage. But right now we've got the materials, we've
got the technology that fifty plus percent is very, very achievable.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Now, last time we talked to you, we also we're
just starting to work with various local concrete production facilities.
How many are you working with now and what's your
goal for, say the end of twenty twenty five in
terms of geographic coverage in the United States?
Speaker 2 (06:25):
Sure, so, you know we've expanded, you know, the number
of folks were selling our products too, So now we're
up to about we have about six thousand unique customers
in the concrete space in about forty six states, which
is great. We're national, we're looking to expand you know,
my goal is to have us in all fifty major
metropolitan areas in the US within the next couple of years.
(06:49):
We're opening up some exciting new locations. You know, we're
having a ceremony next month for our first big facility
in New York, which will be in Long Island City.
That's a market that's traditionally hasn't had access to our
types of materials and we're going to be bringing them
in and folks are really excited about that. And then
on top of that, we are growing our advanced manufacturing
(07:10):
and harvesting facilities pretty significantly. So this year we just
opened up our newest facility harvesting material in northwest Florida.
We have a new natural pozzle and green cement facility
opening up in the next couple months in Oregon, and
then later this year we've got another ash harvesting facility
in Georgia and one in Alabama that will be opening.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
A lot of progress. Now, you've just closed recently in
February an eight hundred million dollar green term loan facility.
How's that going to accelerate your progress?
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Yeah, that was a great process. I'm always cheered when
we go to the market and talk to folks about
our business because, you know, it's a quirky one, it's
a little niche, but when people do the work around it,
they realize, you know, it's an amazing one. In the
fact that we have such big impact as far as decarbonization,
we can actually still make money, which is great. Right,
(08:01):
So obviously people are loaning us money. They want to
make sure they're going to get paid back. And we
went into the market to raise more money to fund
more growth, more of those projects like I described, and
the market was very receptive. We were heavily oversubscribed. You know,
we probably had three billion dollars worth of orders, and
we were able to raise more money and lower our
(08:21):
interest rate and turn out our debt for another seven years.
So we've basically got a facility we don't have to
touch for the next seven years, you know. We you know,
it's a little bit over seven percent in our interest costs,
which is you know, great for a company of our size,
and was really a nice validation in the progress that
we've made and the growth that we've been able to achieve.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
What's really impressive is you're doing this not to make
a pun but organically, this is growing out of demand
for low carbon concrete and doubling production to like twenty
million tons per year is really ambitious. Are there? Do
you need support from polishy makers, uh, for instance, with
mandates for low carbon construction, or it's just just gonna
(09:05):
happen on its own.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
A lot of it can happen on its own, you know, honestly,
you know, we've obviously had a change in administrations. Uh,
and a lot of folks you know, would say to me, oh,
are you really concerned about this changing the administrations is less
of a focus on on on on decarbonization, et cetera,
et cetera. And I'd say, actually not not particularly. You know,
the previous administration you know, really wanted to push you know, uh,
(09:30):
decarbonization of infrastructure. But honestly, the federal government has not
so many levers as you would think. It's really state
based on what happens, and so that hasn't really changed
that much. I don't think there's gonna be a lot
of monies for you know, for you know, like the
IRA et cetera, going forward for the next four years.
But there may actually be a silver lining in the
(09:51):
fact that, you know, the previous administration, while very focused
on pushing you know, obviously a greener agenda, when it
came to coal ash, they were a little bit scared,
right because you hear coal ash, you hear coal, and
if you hear coal and you're a very green focus,
then you, oh, I you can't have anything to do
with that, you know. And obviously we have to take
the time to say listen, we're not burning the coal,
We're cleaning up what was you know, made before, and
(10:14):
we're actually turning what was a problem into a solution.
And so the newer administration, to be honest, is and
you saw this with some of what they may do
with the EPA, I think they're going to act on
a lot of these coal ash regulations to make it
a lot easier to harvest and beneficially use a lot
of these waste stockpiles. So I honestly think that if
(10:34):
it happens, will have a really positive impact, because there
are some vagaries around the rule making in the EPA
today that actually when we go in to try and
harvest ash, we kind of have one hand tie behind
our back, and it'd be great to you know, you know,
be able to do that, you know a lot more effectively.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
There's two facets of how the Trump administration talks about
the climate that I want to ask about. They kind
of put a stink on it, and certainly they ban
the word or the phrase climate change in their communication.
But does that also potentially put you at a disadvantage
when you're bidding on a project, do you have to
change the language that you use the way that people
(11:15):
are talking about changing their DEI language.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
I don't think we really change the language we use.
What I would say is that, you know, our business
and our products have so many positive attributes we'll shift,
we shift sometimes to what attributes we're going to highlight. Right,
So one of the attributes, several of the tributes that
we have that is I think very appealing to this
administration is that we're a domestic producer, were building domestic
(11:38):
manufacturing facilities, We're hiring people for jobs. We are helping
clean up the coal industry and make it more sustainable.
Those are really positive things, especially in an environment where
the incremental semintitious material in the market other than what
we're creating now with these new harvesting projects is important. Right.
It's imported cement or steal slag that's coming from China,
(12:00):
it's coming from Turkey, it's coming from all over the world, right,
and that is not you know, with obviously all the
tariff stuff going on those international supply chains, we don't
think are as robust as an environmentally beneficial or beneficial
to the US manufacturing sector than our domestic supply chains,
which are much more resilient and frankly, you know, fit
(12:21):
into America first. Whether or not that's something that you
really are harping on, it just happens to be the
situation that we're in, so and we don't need a
green premium. We sell competitively, right, and so we can
sell a greener product at a better price, and so
there's no reason why we shouldn't be able to succeed.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
It's interesting that you bring the green premium up because
it seems at least it was fading. Does that motivate
states to put regulations in place requiring lower carbon construction
materials or at this point, is it just a wash
there's no need for stimulus.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
It depends. I think, you know, there are a couple
of statesily California, who are going to take this opportunity
to to likely redouble their efforts to mandate more of
these materials, and I think that's positive for US and
others in the industry. It doesn't have to happen, but
it is. It is positive. So you know, we're supportive
of that when it's done correctly. You know, obviously, like
(13:17):
with any regulation, you know, sometimes there can be pitfalls
in the way that it's enacted versus the way that
the industry really works, and so sometimes good to be
careful about that. But you know, in general, I think
states are are going to keep pushing. I think the
other big change in the market in the last six
twelve months is data centers. You know, it's interesting. I
was looking at a chart the other day and it
(13:38):
shows on one line traditional office buildings and how much
are being constructed. On the other line data centers. And
my hands are converging here, right, And basically, you know,
one of my colleagues was joking to me, when you
look at the chart, data centers are almost almost catching
where traditional office is because traditional office going down, data
center skyrocketing. He says, this when we realize that, you know,
(14:00):
we're making more homes for computers or offices for computers
than we are making offices for humans. Right, this is
when the computers won. But the point is that those
are very concrete intensive, and the Magnificent seven, Yeah, they
may have walked back from a lot of their DII
initiatives and their ESG induatives, but they're still really focused
on limiting the impact of these facilities, and the best
(14:21):
way to do that is to use more SEMs like
ours like coal ash. So there's been a big push
for usage of these materials in those construction projects.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
It's really encouraged me to here. And there's a lot
to dig into on this, but we need to take
a quick commercial break. We're going to be right back now.
Let's get back to the conversation with Grant Quashia. He's
CEO of the low carbon concrete supplier Eco Materials Technology,
and he is saying a lot of really interesting things
(14:50):
about the impact of the Trump administration, and I want
to dig a little past Trump and what they're doing
to overall global trade tensions that are re all of
these tariffs that we're talking about. Do you see tariffs
on construction materials being a barrier to your growth or
an opportunity for you to grow? Could you, for instance,
could you license your technology into another country?
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Absolutely? So, you know, as we kind of covered a
bit earlier, tariffs can be challenging in a number of ways.
But as a domestic producer in an industry that has
a lot of important material tariffs are actually beneficial for
us in the US, and we think further highlight this
resilience of a domestic supply chain that also helps clean
up community. So, you know, we think that that can
(15:34):
be a positive thing. That said, you know, I don't
know where all that's going to shake out. I don't
think anybody knows where all that's going to shake out.
On the international side, You're absolutely right. We have started
to do some more work thinking about how do we
effectively roll out some more of this technology into other
parts of the world where it is, you know, we
(15:55):
think very beneficial. The good or the bad thing about
ASH is that it's everywhere, and so we have the
ability to go to Poland, to go to South Africa,
to go to Korea, and to do what we're doing
here there now to an extent, there are others that
are doing similar type stuff to what we're doing in
other national locations. However, our higher technology, our green cement products,
(16:18):
those types of things, those are things where we can
go in either you know, we're likely we're an American company,
We're likely to remain mostly focused here. It's not going
to be a build, owned and operate a strategy. Likely
in the international space, Like you said, it's probably more
of a joint venture or a licensing type situation where
we find a partner who can really benefit from our
(16:41):
technology and know how, and we work together to try
to expand that. And I just hit a couple of
the markets that I think could be good.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
You know.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
One of the other markets is super interesting, is obviously
a complicated today is Ukraine. Hopefully at some point there's
a cessation in hostilities there. They have a huge amount
of coal ash and they have a huge amount of
infrastructure to rebuild, so that could be an interesting opportunity.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
Let's talk a little bit. Concrete production is a local thing,
but suppley supplementary simentatious materials. You got to take time
to say that, right, is something that is made and
then distributed to these local production facilities. Can you talk
about how local this business really is and will it
continue to be more local or are we globalizing in
(17:25):
some sense?
Speaker 2 (17:27):
You know, fifty years ago at the start of the industry,
when one of our first predecessor companies in the late
nineteen sixties, a company called Dayton fly Ash started moving
fly ash, it was extremely local, right, and it stayed
extremely local, you know for a long long time, right,
the value of the material was so low that it
didn't make sense to move it around. Now, for all
(17:48):
the reasons that we've talked about, the value of the
material is higher, and you know, logistics have become somewhat
more efficient, and so folks like ourselves have invested massively
in logistics infrastructure to move this stuff and take it
from a local to a regional and almost a national
and international space. Now, so whereas you know today we
(18:12):
ship you know, hundreds of thousands of tons from the
Midwest from Illinois to California, right, that's almost two thousand miles, right,
and we make that work economically for ourselves and our partners.
So you know that is not the most efficient way
to use these materials, right. The most efficient way is
to serve the local market first. But oftentimes the local
market get is saturated, right, and you need options to
(18:34):
move out further. And so with efficient rail, which is
one of the amazing things that our country has that
people don't necessarily always realize. We have an amazing rail system,
and we have an amazing river system. We use barges
as well, super efficient ways. And you need to be
efficient because you can't you can't fetex this stuff and
put it in a plane, right that and then the
third piece is the is the international seaborne market. People
(18:57):
are importing ash into s cms into the US. The
majority of the supply of granulated blast furnace steel slag,
which is a competing SCM. We don't produce any of it,
but think of fly ash coming from a coal plant
to steel slag coming from a big steel furnace. Right.
We don't have a lot of these big steel furnaces
(19:19):
anymore in the US, but there's lots of them in Asia,
and so they're sending a lot of this steel slag,
which acts a lot like fly ash as a supplementary
semititious material. And it's international trade and it's growing significantly now.
It's mostly going to coastal areas, you know, southern Florida, Houston,
Ship Channel, parts of the West coast, but it is
(19:39):
it's definitely turning into a lot more of a globalized trade.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
Concrete is the second most used human material after water,
which is an astonishing thought when you when you stop
and think about it.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
Yeah, no, And it's the statistic that I love is
that every year we pour third thirty billion tons of concrete.
So that means for every man, woman and child, you're
pouring like four tons of concrete that's eight thousand pounds
per person. It's an astoundingly large amount and it really
(20:15):
speaks to the fact that this is it's one of
those it's one of those industries that you know, people
don't tend to think a lot about, but once you
do think about it, it's everywhere.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
It gives a different meaning to the word infrastructure for sure. Yes,
the thinking about that, how do you get architects and
the folks who are designing highways and freeways and data
centers to engage with the idea of using low carbon concrete.
Are you integrating with their planning tools for instance, making it,
(20:48):
making it available, and they're building information management system so
that they can project the potential savings.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
You know? That is that is something that we continue
to work on. I think it generally it starts with
the state Department of Transportation because they tend to act
as the first sort of good housekeeping seal of approval.
If you are on the approved list for critical infrastructure
within a state, right whether they be EPCs or architects
or whatever, they can look at that and you can
point to that and say, listen, this stuff. Is this
(21:14):
stuff safe enough to make a bridge span it's safe
enough for your for your residential complex or what have you.
Then the next thing is really just being proactive, whether
it's with industry associations, whether with big companies, big EPCs
and what have you, and just letting you know, sharing
more information, more test results, more spec sheets, more case studies.
(21:36):
You know I you know, for example, you know I
mentioned earlier, but you know, a big effort that I
and we've been making recently is with companies that are
building data centers and saying, you know, here's how you
here's here's who we are. You probably don't know us,
but you should, and you're probably actually using a lot
of our materials, but you know, you should be more
thoughtful about that and maybe more proactive and use more
(21:58):
and here's how we can work together. It's et cetera.
So honestly, it's a lot of handholding, and it starts
at least for us anyway. We're in a really good
position because our traditional products have been in the market
for decades and have been trusted for decades, and so
when we bring in newer products, it's really just it's
it's it's it's the iPhone seventeen. Right, Oh, you like
(22:20):
the iPhone sixteen. Right, well, here's the iPhone seventeen. It's
a little bit better, it's a little bit you know,
more efficient, it's a better environmentally et cetera. But it's
got all the same things that you're used to in
the iPhone sixteen.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
Are the data center companies looking for carbon credit opportunities?
Can you write down certain costs because you can take
a carbon credit against the fact that you used a
low concrete or low carbon concrete.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
I can't say that I've necessarily heard of that. What
I can say is that, you know, often the folks
that are developing the data centers are not the end users,
right They'll.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
No, they're not.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
They'll they'll be there'll be some development company, but they
will lease these to Google, to to you know, to
to to Facebook or whomever. And those folks when they're
in the process of doing that, you know, leasing and
providing that service, having that lower embedded emissions profile, I
(23:18):
think is a real selling point and hopefully is a
way that they can make more money and you know,
provide perhaps a competitive advantage for somebody else who hasn't
done that. Additionally, there's just there's cost benefits for our
regular materials. For the regular fly ash we we we manufacture,
it's still you know, usually twenty or thirty percent cheaper
(23:38):
than just using cement, So you know, there'll be cost
savings for them as well, just just as as there
would be if you were building a road with our material.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
Gosh, just competing on the economic factors, no emotion. It
really it strips away a lot of the passion people feel.
And you just get down to this raw material that
we're building almost all of society with. It changes your
perspective on how we talk about this as a you know,
making the business case for sustainability. It isn't even necessary
(24:08):
based on the way you're describing.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
No, and then the other thing that people always seem
to harp on and people and I get it because
it's a niche space and the data is hard to
come by, but I hear all the time, you know,
well ash is running out, fly ash is running out.
We've got to come up with other solutions. There's got
to be new new things we need to do. And
I just and my answer is that no, we're actually
entering a new golden age of ash. We are. You know,
(24:32):
there's there's at least three big levers that are being
pulled right now. One is a little counterintuitive. One is actually,
because of the Trump administration, coal plants are shutting a
lot slower than they were. Right A lot of these
utilities are pushing out, and a lot of this is
driven by power demand. In AI, they're pushing out retirement.
So fresh ash is not going away as quickly as
(24:53):
people think. It is. The harvesting et cetera that we're
doing and others are doing ramping up dramatically fast. You know,
it's going up thirty forty percent a year in production.
And then you've got natural puzzlins as well that are
in the mix. We are going to have so much ash. Actually, folks,
you know, don't need we don't need to reinvent the wheel.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
Here.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
There's people with cool technologies that are that are making
SEMs out of interesting stuff, and I think wish them
well and I hope that's great. But the nice thing
is that we actually have cracked the code on how
to make the materials we've already been using for decades
even last even longer and produce even more so we
can get to those higher replacement rates.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
So where do you see the construction industry and particularly
in its use of concrete. In five years, is it
one hundred percent more, five hundred percent more? What's the
pace of growth that we should be looking for.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
So I think you'll see in ash. I think in
the next five years, I think we should go from
about a fifteen percent replacement rate to about twenty which
is significant. So that's about a you know, a thirty
three percent increase. But where you'll see significant growth is
in harvesting. So you're going to see last year, by
my numbers, there are about two million tons a year
(26:08):
of ash that was harvested from landfills. By the end
of this decade, that'll be closer to eight or nine
million tons a year, and so that is going to increase,
you know, close to fivefold, and that is going to
be the biggest change in the industry VISA vs. CMS
that I see. On the margin, you'll have some other
changes as well. I think you'll have some more imports
(26:29):
coming in, mostly of steel slag, so there'll be some
more imports there. You'll have some new technologies that are
coming out. A company called terra Co two is coming
up with basically like a synthetic version of fly ash.
They all start with some production, but those are pretty
small when you consider they're looking to build one hundred
thousand ton of year facilities and I'm talking about million
(26:49):
tons of year facilities that are coming on line for harvesting,
et cetera. So I think you're going to see, like
I said, you know, a golden age in ash and SCMS,
and it's really going to start taken off in the
next five years or so. In fact, you know, I've
been you know, I've been preaching this for a while.
Somebody started listening. About four months ago. McKinsey put a
report out and it was about the next decade in
(27:11):
cement and they said that the next decade in cement
will be dominated by SCMS. So hopefully people get you know,
I even stumble over the words sometimes too, but get
used to saying supplementary, semintitious materials, the rain.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
And spain falls mainly on the plane. It's almost the same.
You know, you look across the construction industry generally, are
there other areas you think there are opportunities for improvement?
I mean, maybe not eco material to going after it,
but what else should entrepreneurs be looking at as opportunities
to lower the carbon intensity of our built environment.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
Yes, absolutely, I think, you know, I think efficiency is
really just the lowest is some of the lowest hanging fruit,
right is making sure that you know, we're doing more
with less. I think there's been a lot of efforts
in that recycling of of waste construction material. Those are
all helpful. But for me, you know, I think the
biggest issue that you know, putting aside critical infrastructure, which
(28:12):
we need to reinvest in and as always needs more investment,
and AI and non non resp we look at residential housing.
That's the biggest issue I see for this country for
the next ten to twenty years, which is how do
we have reasonably costed, sustainable and good quality, resilient housing
(28:34):
stock put in place. It's a super hard question, and
it's a super one. That's really, I think, more than
any other issue in construction, hits the average American every
day in their pocketbook, in their experience, which is, I
want to be able to afford a good quality home
that I can live in it, and I can afford
and I don't have to worry about, you know, floods
(28:55):
and wildfires and hurricanes and all this sort of stuff
that may be coming may be exacerbated by things that
are happening the climate. One answer to that, which has
been on the come for a long time is three
D printing of homes with greener material, and we're involved
in that, and we supply a really high quality material
to home three D printing, and we actually this year
we're breaking ground on what will be the largest project
(29:18):
from a municipality's perspective in three D home printing, will
be printing between fifty and eighty homes in the city
of Houston. These will be affordable homes. They'll start about
two hundred thousand dollars, they will be very high quality
twenty five hundred square feet, and they'll really be cost
efficient and they'll be really resilient. So it's stuff like
that that I see and I think, Wow, you know,
(29:39):
if we can get this right, you can address that problem,
which I really think is the number one thing that
the average American worries about when they think about construction.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
I think you're right, and we've been launching the three
D printed home, particularly concrete print at home for several
years with a lot of interest. Do you think that's
a is that a building methodology that is sufficiently just
distributed for this to happen rapidly. Or is that the
entrepreneurial opportunity to start a construction company around three D printing.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
I think that's the opportunity. I think there's I think
technologically people have had fits and starts, but I think
it's been to my mind, I've seen it proven that
it can be done. How to do it at scale
and efficiently is the real challenge, because there's not really
anybody out there doing that right now, and we stand
ready to help. You know, we've been tailoring our recipes
(30:29):
in some of our green cement projects to make it
easier for these things to work, and to make it
cost efficient too. Right, there's a price point at which
it makes sense for someone to print a house out
of concrete, and then there's a price point where it
makes sense that doesn't make sense anymore, right, And so
we as an industry, if we want to make that happen,
we've got to make sure that we control our cost
efficiently so that it makes sense. And so far as
(30:51):
the future goes, I'm optimistic. That said, you know, the
construction industry moves slowly, so it will take time.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
Grant. It's always inspiring him pragmatic to talk to you.
How can folks keep up on what you're doing?
Speaker 2 (31:06):
Thanks, Mitch, I appreciate your time and you have some
great questions. Best way to do it is to follow
me on LinkedIn Grant Quasha q U A s h A,
or to check us out on ecomateial dot com. That's
e c O M A T E R I A
L dot com.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
Well great, thanks very much for spending time with us today, Grant,
it's been fascinating.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
Take care of miss Thank.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
You you've been listening to a conversation with Grant Quasha.
He is CEO of Eco Material Technologies about that company's
low carbon potzolonic concrete that was invented by the Romans,
by the way, and that can be made out of
industrial waste such as fly ash, allowing us to clean
(31:52):
up even super fun sites while building affordable homes. It's
really something when you think about it, and you can
learn more about Ecomterial Technologies at ecomterial dot com. Ecomterial
is all one word, no space, no dash, and I
think what we've just heard is what sustainable business sounds
like when it's made its case on purely economic terms.
(32:14):
The growing focus on sustainability among businesses who are often
driven by their desire to police consumers who are overwhelmingly
concerned about the environment, will be consolidated and become the
norm as products like ecomterial technologies, concrete becomes widely available
when a material is cheaper better. That's because potzolonic concrete
lasts longer than Portland cement, and also that product checks
(32:38):
the sustainability box, adoption becomes a no brainer decision. Grants
challenge may be getting supplies of fly ash closer to
the thirty four hundred or so companies that make ready
mixed concrete and the ninety six locations that produce wet
concrete for use in large scale construction projects. What we're
talking about is an incredibly local business, one that has
only about ninety minutes or three hundred rebus ills of
(33:00):
the mixer after water is added to the dry mix
before it can no longer be used because the concrete
has started to set and loses its ability to be worked.
We have to get this done quick, and we have
to get it done locally. The potential for low income housing,
for which Americans are in severe need due to a
shortage of more than seven point one million units of
affordable housing. Is potentially a vast opportunity to drive rapid
(33:23):
adoption of low carbon concrete. As Grant mentioned, eco material
concrete is being used to print homes in the Houston area,
but think about the need for fire resistant homes made
of concrete in the urban wilderness interface, or as we've
recently learned in the Los Angeles basin. Concrete printing systems
can be rolled up to a home site and complete
(33:44):
the production of a house in hours, saving labor time
usually spent on framing. And that's just the start of
the benefits. If you're thinking about starting a sustainable company,
consider three D concrete printed construction as a business. There
are only thirty two of these construction companies in the
United Slime States. That may be the entrepreneurial opportunity of
the decade. I mean, imagine the demand for affordable, fast
(34:06):
homes just in Los Angeles. So you know what we've
learned is business is just going on and sustainability is
on the menu. Will continue to track this topic and
if you are a three D concrete printing company, drop
me a line. About talking with me on the show.
Speaking of the show, would you take a moment to
look at any of the more than five hundred episodes
of Sustainability in Your Ear that we've produced and sharing
(34:29):
them with your friends. Folks, by writing review on your
favorite podcast platform, you'll help your neighbors find us. You
are the amplifiers that can spread more ideas to create
less waste. Tell your friends, family, and coworkers, the people
you meet on the street that they can find us
on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Audible, or any purveyor of
(34:49):
podcast goodness that they prefer. Thank you so much for
your support. I'm Mettrackliff. This is Sustainability in Your Ear
and we will be back with another innovator interview soon.
In the meantime, folks, take care of yourself, take care
of one another, and let's all take care of this
beautiful planet of ours. Have a green day.
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