Living Ports Shortlisted for ESPO Award

The consortium of Living Ports are honored for the project to be nominated again for the ESPO award, following the previous nomination in 2021.

Under the theme “Nature restoration projects in ports benefiting the local community”, the ESPO Award 2023 will go to the port managing body which has developed innovative ways to develop these new roles and combine port development with successfully protecting and restoring nature in and around the port area to the benefit of the citizens and local community.

Learn more about the nomination in an in depth interview with the Port of Vigo about the Living Ports project.

In 2021, the ESPO Award celebrated port managing bodies which were best playing a role in recovering from the COVID-19 crisis, whilst contributing to the recovery and prosperity of the local community. Learn more about the nomination in the interview with the Port of Vigo.

Learn more about how the unique Living Ports project is making waves with technology set to build stronger, environmentally-friendly infrastructure.

COASTALOCK: Single-Layer-Armor Unit Designed for Project and Planet

Interlocking Armor Needs an Upgrade

Interlocking armor is used along many of our coasts and waterfronts as a versatile solution for building breakwaters, coastal erosion control, and land reclamation. Many of the traditional armoring units are problematic in the impacts they have on the environment, damaging marine life alongside high carbon footprints. Traditional concrete comes with large costs, both economic and environmental because it lacks ecological consideration during construction.

When coastal armor works with nature, there is a high return on investment. A $75 million project to construct 8 breakwaters along New York’s shores faced a $18 million environmental mitigation penalty cost for the infrastructure’s projected damages to the site’s environment. However, when ecological design changes and ECOncrete technologies were implemented in these breakwaters’ design, the project’s mitigation penalties dropped to only $4 million.

A Solution for Industry-Standard Coastal Armor

Traditional interlocking coastal armors have smooth, flat-plane designs and harsh chemical compositions that make it difficult for marine ecosystems to thrive on and around these infrastructures. When the armor is placed in intertidal zones to protect from wave action or control erosion, the structures do not replicate the form and function of natural coastal systems, therefore destroying natural habitat without a replacement.

The Port of San Diego was searching for a structural solution that would not only protect port assets but also help adapt to climate change. They sought project benefits for the local economy, community, and environment. ECOncrete worked with the Port of San Diego to design an armor unit that is structurally sound and provides native habitat in a riprap scheme.

The COASTALOCK Trifecta

COASTALOCK is an interlocking single-layer concrete armor unit designed to perform for project and planet.

“COASTALOCK is the trifecta we love: carbon sequestration, smaller footprint, while at the same time, providing resilience.”

Jason H. Giffen, Vice President of Planning, Environment, and Government Relations, Port of San Diego

The COASTALOCK has micro and macro features that allow marine organisms to grab on and thrive. In contrast, traditional concrete armor’s smooth surface provides no indents or grooves for organisms to grab onto, resulting in a bare, lifeless surface.

By mimicking the world’s greatest engineer, nature, COASTALOCK encourages bio-protection: biodiverse marine life which grow on the structure and create a protective layer that shield the concrete from physical and chemical degradation. With bioprotection, the magnitude and frequency of structural maintenance is reduced, resulting in improved ecological stability and a greater return on investment.

“Environmental benefits and social benefits also produce tremendous value. Whenever we can generate more value by spending fewer resources and creating multiple public benefits, that’s smart, that’s good business, that’s positive leverage and that’s what we should be doing.”

Rafael Castellanos, Board of Commissioners, Port of San Diego

There is a cavern in every COASTALOCK armor that can retain water at low tide. When the unit is rotated, however, the tidepool can also become an overhand or cave, providing shelter and breeding habitat for species that need different conditions. The ability to interlock at any orientation not only accommodates sensitive marine species, but also allows for versatile and flexible infrastructure arrangements. The units have been specifically developed so that they are able to be deployed on very steep (upto 1V:1H) sloping shorelines. The shape of the tide pools provide for interlocking between adjacent units which further improves stability when exposed to intense waves and currents.

Most interlocking armor solutions can incorporate ECOncrete’s admix and texture technology, and most standard rock ripraps, revetments, and breakwater concrete single-layer armors can be fully-replaced by COASTALOCK to create natural and efficient shoreline systems. At the Port of San Diego, ECOncrete’s technology replaced sections of the rock riprap with armor well-suited for the Port’s future: effective, efficient, and climate-adapted.

With sustainable planning, incorporating marine-friendly infrastructure can help ports build for the future.

Living Dikes for the Netherlands

Unique pilot in the Wadden Sea: large-scale trial for underwater nature

On Monday, November 8, a unique trial began in the Wadden Sea, on the Groningse Lauwersmeerdijk. Over the next three years, a pilot program will test how underwater nature at the foot of the dike can be best enriched. Ten different ecological technologies and artificial reef structures will be installed for the pilot, three of which are ECOncrete’s technologies. ECOncrete concrete armor blocks, tide pool armor, and articulated concrete block mattresses will be providing structural support for the dike’s riprap and toe, while serving a platform for biodiverse marine life to grow.

This pilot is the first large-scale trial carried out on a dike in the Wadden Sea. An underwater nature trial of this scale provides new insights to improve water quality and nature in the Wadden Sea. By enabling the ecosystem to recover, the structure and the communities it protects can become more resilient to the effects of climate change.

ECOncrete’s global head of engineering, Jorge Gutiérrez Martínez at the site visit, with tide pools

Unique Trial with Reef Elements and Tide Pools

The Netherlands have built dikes to protect the country against flooding. As a result, the gradual transition between mudflats and land has disappeared, and been replaced with hard edges. This transitions comes with negative consequences for water quality and nature.

The Noorderzijlvest water board is involved in strengthening the Lauwersmeerdijk in Groningen working with its partners on infrastructure for nature on and around the dike. Part of this infrastructure is the underwater nature enhancement structures at the foot (toe) of the dike. This test is unique as no less than ten different reef and structural elements are incorporated at different locations and depths.

Structures like modified artificial hard dikes can fulfill an even better function for organisms in the Wadden Sea. Artificial reef elements and structurally supportive tidal pools, provide hiding, resting and spawning places for different marine species, such as fish. Shellfish, mollusks, and algae also benefit from these structures, they can attach and thus create more biodiversity and productivity. The sedentary species that make this project their home can even help strengthen the concrete, with a buffering layer of calcitic armor from barnacle or clam shells, while storing carbon as species like oysters or limpets grow their skeletons.

Outcome of importance for the entire Wad

University of Groningen and Van Hall Larenstein University of Applied Sciences will monitor progress through research. The results of the research will be used to inform the final design of the new Lauwersmeerdijk with a reef at its toe. Research also has a broader role, and will provide more insight into the effects of the reef elements and tidal pools in the Wadden Sea.

The study will investigate which species settle on which structures and to what extent they enrich the Wadden ecosystem. This information can be applied to future projects around the Wadden, such as with other dike reinforcements or adaptations of other artificial hard structures in the Wadden Sea. The trial will show how the increase in habitats and connections between the mudflats and the land near the dike can best be realized. As a result, the dike contributes to achieving the nature objectives for the Wadden area and making the ecosystem more robust.

ECOncrete’s global head of engineering, Jorge Gutiérrez Martínez at the site visit, with marine mattresses

Cooperation

The trial was realized within a special collaboration. Noorderzijlvest water board is the client for the test, and partners are Het Groninger Landschap, Rijkswaterstaat Northern Netherlands, municipality of Het Hogeland, province of Groningen, engineering firm Arcadis and a Waddenkwartier contractor combination (Heijmans and GMB). The project is co-financed by the Wadden Fund and the Programmatic Approach to Large Waters. The suppliers of the infrastructure are ECOncrete Tech, Reefsystems and Moreef. Van Hall Larenstein and University Groningen monitor and research ecological development.

Blog adapted from project press release.

COP26 Countdown: ECOncrete CEO on Tedx

ECOncrete CEO Dr. Ido Sella makes a compelling argument for climate action at a TEDxGateway event.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzo3j5u03HM

Spanish EFE Verde Reports on ECOncrete in Spain

The leading Spanish news-wire EFE covered ECOncrete’s engagement in Spain and our projects in Malaga and Vigo in an in-depth article.

ECOncrete CEO Ido Sella was interviewed for the article, explaining how ECOncrete solutions create more sustainable marine infrastructure. The article further discusses our project with IGY Marina in Malaga, Spain installing ECOncrete’s technologies for beautiful, living breakwaters. And it gives background on our ‘Living Ports’ project in the Port of Vigo, an EU funded project where ECOncrete is in the lead to develop and build next-generation port infrastructure.

Read the full article in Spanish.

ECOncrete & HolcimUS Partner to Develop New Tech for Offshore Wind

ECOncrete Tech Ltd. and LafargeHolcim in the US, the country’s largest cement manufacturer, have joined forces to design and produce an ecologically beneficial concrete scour protection unit for offshore wind turbine foundations.

The Biden Administration set the goal of creating 30 GW of offshore wind by 2030 while protecting biodiversity and promoting ocean co-use, an effort which, to achieve sustainably, should use best available technologies to ensure the health of our marine environment and species. The scour protection developed by this partnership would be the first, and currently, only structural solution to address the ecological impacts of offshore wind turbines on the marine environment, enabling a more sustainable industry and healthier oceans.

Rethinking Scour Protection

Offshore wind turbines require massive concrete foundations to anchor them in place. Hydrodynamic forces can create large holes around foundations, necessitating scour protections. Scour protections are units designed to protect sediments from being swept away by currents, and are often installed in a mound to protect the turbines’ foundations. This kind of concrete infrastructure has a large impact on sensitive benthic, or seabed, ecosystems.

The goal is to design and manufacture a fully-structural concrete scour protection unit that facilitates the growth of marine organisms, while meeting all industry standards for stabilizing the seabed. The R&D collaboration includes a large-scale pilot project to evaluate the ecological performance of the innovative units in an offshore environment before implementation in full-scale installations.

Minimizing ecological impact of offshore wind-farms

“Offshore energy production is a rapidly growing market worldwide, and while there are certainly benefits of using renewable energy, there is also an impact of these giant structures on the sensitive underwater ecosystems,” said Dr. Ido Sella, CEO and Co-Founder at ECOncrete Tech. “We view our collaboration with LafargeHolcim in the US as key to minimizing this impact.”

“For LafargeHolcim in the US, we recognize that there are many paths to achieving our net zero commitment, and most require innovative partnerships and out-of-the-box thinking,” said Josep Maset, VP, Commercial Excellence at LafargeHolcim in the US. “The work we’re doing with ECOncrete Tech is a notable example of searching for solutions that enable increased use of renewable energy in an environmentally responsible way.”

This three-year joint R&D project began in May 2021 and is funded by a grant from the Binational Industrial Research and Development (BIRD) Energy programme.

Armoring Ourselves Against the Next Big Storm

Coastal cities such as New York and Miami are at risk of flooding, high tides, and storm surges. Climate change causes water to expand and melts glacial ice caps, accelerating the rise of sea levels. As seas rise, some of the world’s major coastal cities, which are home to half of the human population, might find themselves underwater in less than a century. By 2100, the most recent IPCC report predicts oceans will rise 0.44-0.76 m (1.4-2.5 ft) under the intermediate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions scenario, and 0.63-1.01 m (2.1-3.3 ft) under the very high GHG emissions scenario. Due to variable conditions and elevations, the water level in any particular place may rise by much more. In New York City, as much as 6 feet of sea level rise is expected by 2100.

The search for sustainable solutions

Most cities and their governments are taking action to protect their coastlines from this imminent threat. In Bangkok and Tokyo, there are new regulations regarding groundwater extraction that reduce the rate of subsidence and restore groundwater levels (an important source of fresh water for many regions). Solutions also include updating infrastructure, creating new zoning regulations, and coastal defense systems to protect from rising sea levels and superstorms. In New York City, annual storm seasons make urban flooding a critical infrastructure problem.

Learning from the past

Altogether, the past decade’s storms totaled $800 billion in damages, an average of ($80.2 billion per year).

In 2005, Hurricane Katrina affected hundreds of thousands of people, especially those from already vulnerable communities with few resources and flood-prone homes, forcing many to leave metro areas and increasing socio-economic disparities. Despite the $14.5 billion invested in levee improvements after the historic storm, Hurricane Ida, a comparatively strong storm, still left New Orleans and the populations outside the levees flooded in water.

Recent mega-hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria have all raised the same question: What should we do to help reduce massive cleanup and rebuilding efforts for dozens of towns and cities that have already developed infrastructure and neighborhoods on land vulnerable to floods?

Many communities have come to the conclusion that a passive approach to natural disasters does not work. In Ocean Breeze, a Staten Island community, instead of rebuilding on vulnerable flood plains, some residents have chosen to leave old neighborhoods behind to allow nature to return, an approach known as “managed retreat”. However, in most places, people still prefer to live near the coasts and accept unmitigated flooding risk.

Preparing for the future

In 2012, Superstorm Sandy struck New York, bringing record-breaking wind gusts and deadly flooding. In New York City, over 69,000 residential units were destroyed, thousands were displaced, and 44 citizens perished. After Superstorm Sandy, the federal government launched Rebuild By Design (RBD), a competition for expert groups offering strategies and solutions to prepare for the next big storm. This competition selected 7 projects to protect the coastlines of NYC and New Jersey, as well as a model to help prepare communities for future challenges.

Rebuild by Design’s goal was simple yet audacious: as the risk of flooding increases due to intensified storms and sea-level rise, can communities join together to shift its course and build a more resilient society before a big disaster hits, while also addressing other challenges along the way? One of the competition’s winners was a project designed to protect Staten Island from future storms, called the Living Breakwaters Project.

Harnessing nature’s engineering tricks

Living Breakwaters is a “necklace” of 9 breakwaters, aimed to promote coastal resilience for Staten Island by reducing the height of waves hitting the shore and extending the width of the beach. These breakwaters are “living” infrastructures as they help revive local marine ecosystems. The combination of ecologically designed breakwaters and bio-enhancing materials reestablishes habitat complexity and mimics the wave-weakening functionality of the natural oyster reefs that had previously dominated the area.

As keystone species, oyster reefs bolster the local aquatic community by providing food, refuge, and protect shorelines by reducing erosion; they are ecosystem engineers that turn into wave buffers over time while providing a home for a variety of marine organisms. Not only do the living buffers restore aquatic communities, they also protect communities from storms while local fisheries benefit from cleaner waters.

The project’s integration of ECOncrete’s concrete armor into the breakwaters stabilizes the infrastructure while creating habitat for local species. The green breakwater armor differs from traditional concrete armor due to its ability to support important local species, such as ecosystem engineering oysters. Not only does the ECOncrete infrastructure encourage marine life to thrive, the added weight, surface complexity, and natural ability to change with ocean conditions increases stability and durability of the structure.

Nature-based infrastructure solutions

There are many ways to armor our cities against intensifying storms and warming seas. A consensus is forming among coastal policymakers, planners, and developers: resilience-building projects are responsible not only for the protection of our waterfronts, but also for ecosystem preservation. Solutions such as living shorelines (“soft edges” such as marsh plantings, dunes, and mangrove restorations) are gaining popularity. Where “hardened coasts” or concrete infrastructures are needed, hybrid solutions are becoming integral tools for projects aiming to set a new standard for coastal construction.

ECOncrete Arrives at IGY Málaga Marina

IGY’s state-of-the-art superyacht marina is getting a new set of vertical breakwaters, built out of ECOncrete’s technology. Why is the Málaga Marina using ECOncrete’s solution? In short: better biodiversity, more carbon storage, and longer service life.

BBC Examines ECOncrete as the Sustainable Alternative for Marine Construction

While concrete is the most widely-used man made material on Earth, it is also the third largest source of carbon emissions and is detrimental to aquatic life. BBC discussed ECOncrete as the eco-friendly solution for marine infrastructure. Not only is it nearly carbon neutral, but the concrete itself is superior in functionality compared to mainstream carbon.

Alex Rogers, director of science at the marine health non-profit REV Ocean, says that “Concrete is a conventional material, everyone understands it, and it is low cost. But really, in this day and age, when we’re looking at much more sustainable ways of carrying out development – whether it’s coastal reclamation or other forms of building – we should be looking at alternative materials that have a lower impact on the environment.”

Read more about ECOncrete’s solution on BBC’s Future Planet article. ->

UN Sustainable Development Goals Create Guidelines for the Future of Construction

Why UN Sustainable Development Goals?

In an effort to reduce the impact of human development on the environment, the United Nations Development Program has set a 2030 target to achieve 17 Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs.

As our global population increases, so does the pressure on our environment and natural resources. Construction and buildings currently account for 40% of global CO2 emissions. New construction, especially in sensitive marine areas, is quickly reducing natural habitats. Yet, sustainable solutions are only a tiny portion of the construction industry. In the buildings sector for example, “for every $1 spent on energy efficiency $37 are spent on conventional construction approaches.” While green construction practices take root on land, with solutions like green roofs, walls, and facades, sustainable construction solutions are often missing from our urban waterfronts.

By implementing technologies with multiple co-benefits, we can reduce the carbon footprint of ports, marinas and other coastal development projects, while making them more resilient and adaptive to climate change.

Eco-engineering a sustainable future

Concrete currently makes up 70% of marine infrastructure. Most of that concrete is made of Portland cement, a “grey” material that does not support “green” marine life. Simple solutions can transform the concrete used in maritime construction, enabling ports, offshore energy suppliers, and urban waterfront to meet the ambitious SDGs.

By aligning with these goals, companies can create sustainable infrastructure solutions and maximize benefits in a world with growing challenges and shrinking resources. According to Ernst and Young (EY) “All companies stand to gain from more resilient communities, reliable access to natural resources, and an educated and healthy population to support their workforce. By helping drive progress toward these outcomes and creating shared value, companies can help to secure their ability to generate capital and shareholder value over the long-term.”

Meeting the challenge

ECOncrete provides ecological concrete technologies for coastal and marine construction that help marine life flourish on and around concrete infrastructure. By installing a technical solution that restores marine life (SDG 14; Life Below Water), organizations that use ECOncrete reduce the ecological footprint of concrete and revive coastal biodiversity (SDG 11; Sustainable Cities). More biology growing on concrete also improves the strength and durability of concrete infrastructure (SDG 9; Innovation).

Produced from over 92% recycled industrial byproducts (SDG 12; Responsible Consumption and Production) ECOncrete’s bio-enhancing admix has a manufacturing carbon footprint that’s up to 70% lower than conventional Portland Cement-based concrete products (SDG 13; Climate Action). The admix also supports biocalcification (the accumulation of calcium-carbonate based animals, like oysters) and photosynthesis on the concrete, enabling concrete infrastructure to become an active carbon sink.

When applied in the construction of coastal defense projects such as breakwaters or seawalls aimed primarily at climate adaptation, ECOncrete boosts the performance of infrastructure by harnessing processes that already occur naturally in marine environments, like biocalcification (SDG 14; Life Below Water). This further increases the resilience and adaptivity of the structures (SDG 9; Innovation).

In the United States, multiple large-scale coastal construction projects have goals of restoring the environment, while protecting waterfronts from flooding and storms (SDG 11; Sustainable Cities and Communities). For example, “Living Breakwaters” is an ecologically envisioned storm protection project that will reduce flooding and erosion risk, revive natural marine habitats (SDG 14; Life Below Water), and connect residents to Staten Island’s shoreline.

We have solutions!

To meet the SDGs by the UN’s goal of 2030, sustainable construction projects need to be implemented wherever possible. In order to change our “business as usual” trajectory, ready-for-market tools for sustainable development must be used. ECOncrete is supporting a variety of partners in deploying these sustainable construction technologies, changing the way our coastlines look and function and building a resilient, climate-adapted future.

Case Study: Sustainable Seawalls for an Urban Marina

Study Duration: 2014-2020

This case study is for landscape architects, engineers, and asset owners, who would like to understand how ECOncrete®’s technologies are integrated into projects and deliver high ecological performance. While ECOncrete’s technology can be applied to any marine concrete, this installation was a pilot project to prove the structural and ecological viability of ECOncrete’s seawall. Since this project, ECOncrete has provided the technology for ecological seawalls for ports, marinas, land reclamations, urban waterfronts, and more.

Problem & Solution

In our marine environment, we build 70% of infrastructures from concrete. While it’s strong and versatile, this material is detrimental to life underwater, leaving our waterfront assets, ecosystems, and communities vulnerable to a changing climate. Concrete’s underwater impacts are a consequence of three design features: a toxic chemical composition and smooth surface textures discourage marine life from growing on the structure, resulting in less local biodiversity and more invasive species. Flat-plane designs provide little shelter and few growth points for marine biology, resulting in infrastructure that stays lifeless for decades. These design failures combine to create infrastructure with high environmental penalty costs, higher maintenance needs, and lower resilience.

ECOncrete resolves these three features with a patented admix, texture agents, and molds proven to improve the structural and ecological performance of concrete. The admixture seals and strengthens concrete by up to 10%, while a combination of texture agents, liners, and molds bring high surface complexity and design features. ECOncrete’s technology enables a rich layer of marine life, like oysters, tubeworms, and corals to grow, thereby generating an active carbon sink and biodiverse ecosystem, while creating structural benefits, such as greater strength and durability. The technology meets industry standards, is flexibly sourced, and can be easily integrated into any concrete marine infrastructure.

Project Details

Herzliya Marina is the largest marina in the Eastern Mediterranean. It focuses on sustainability and was one of the first marinas in Israel to receive the “Blue Flag” eco-label from the Foundation for Environmental Education. In keeping with the marina’s focus on environmentally-sensitive solutions, they installed four highly textured ECOncrete seawalls to encourage diverse marine life. The seawall panels can retrofit an existing seawall or construct a new, load-bearing wall. The seawall, like any ECOncrete solution, supports a wide array of biodiversity critical for a healthy marine system, and can be adapted to promote specific species of conservational value.

Project Monitoring

The study compared ECOncrete’s seawall units to the marina’s existing Portland cement seawall. Immediately after the installation of ECOncrete’s seawall, a baseline survey of the pre-existing seawall’s marine life was conducted. Then, an area within a 30×30 cm stainless steel frame, called a quadrat, was scraped clean of life and used as a control for the study.

Twenty-two months post-installation, ECOncrete’s seawall units presented higher biodiversity than the baseline survey of the traditional seawalls. They were covered with a variety of invertebrates: sponges, oysters, bivalves, bryozoans, sessile tube worms, colonial tunicates, as well as coralline algae. In contrast, the marina seawall control plot showed lower biodiversity than the baseline survey.

Most of the dominant organisms on ECOncrete’s seawall units were species that cement their calcitic skeletons onto the concrete. These creatures create an additional layer of protection from hydrodynamic forces and chloride penetration, thus leading to reduced maintenance costs and a more durable seawall. This protective layer also has an additional benefit: when the organisms create their shells, they draw carbon dioxide from the water, creating an active carbon sink. When growing on a one-kilometer-long by seven-meter-high seawall, for example, the calcitic organisms on ECOncrete’s technology can generate a carbon sink equivalent to 100 trees every year. Some of these calcitic organisms are filter feeders, which to positively contribute to water quality.

Concrete Coming to Life

Caught in a tradeoff

Ports and marinas are an essential part of urban coastlines. They facilitate international trade, serve as important hubs of economic activity, and in some cases serve as trustees, managing public urban waterfronts. While performing these critical services, ports face a challenge when it comes to the infrastructure that supports their activities.

Port infrastructure such as seawalls, breakwaters, and piers are usually concrete based. While concrete is a strong, versatile, and affordable material for building our urban waterfronts and ports, it is destructive to marine life.

When weighing costs and benefits of marine construction projects, ports can be caught in a tradeoff: building infrastructure that improves their operations and can adapt to more severe coastal conditions, or taking pains to meet climate action goals such as lowering carbon footprints and increasing biodiversity.

What if a tradeoff was taken off the table? What if critical infrastructure could be built sustainably?

When traditional concrete doesn’t meet modern challenges

Why is traditional concrete unsustainable? The answer lies in its interaction with the environment and the materials used to create it.
Concrete production is responsible for 8% of global carbon dioxide emissions. Once installed in the water, concrete infrastructures’ chemical compositions and smooth, featureless surfaces make it difficult for marine life to grow on and around the concrete, further destabilizing our oceans.

Not only does the lack of life on and around our port infrastructure lower our chances of revitalizing marine ecosystems, it also has surprisingly harmful impacts on the infrastructure itself. Repairing or replacing traditional seawalls can cost hundreds to thousands of dollars per linear square foot, making consistent maintenance a costly burden, especially with a warming and more energetic ocean. With the help of marine organisms, however, it is possible to have ecologically friendly and structurally sound concrete infrastructure.

How does living infrastructure work?

Natural coastal systems have immense value. Even when only considering moderation of extreme events, like hurricanes, these systems are worth over $12,ooo per hectare per year. When summed, all of the services these ecosystems provide humans (including food, climate regulation, and recreation) can be worth over $84,000 per hectare every year, with coral reefs worth over $150,000 per hectare.

Living infrastructure captures some of the value of natural ecosystems that would otherwise be completely lost by using 100% Portland-cement-based traditional concrete. By mimicking principles of natural environments, also known as biomimicry, coastal concrete infrastructures can recreate some of the functionality and biodiversity of their rocky predecessors.

Three design innovations can help concrete come to life:

Adding ECOncrete admix seals concrete, preventing toxins harmful to marine life from leaching out. This balanced surface chemistry encourages more marine life, and more native marine species to colonize concrete in a much faster period of time. While the infrastructure serves as a home for marine organisms, some of the organisms help armor the structure through a process called bioprotection. Bioprotection is when calcifying organisms, animals that use calcium and carbonate to form their shells, grow and cement their skeletons onto the structure. This helps to strengthen the structure and allows the concrete to act as a carbon sink.

Incorporating surface complexity into infrastructures mimics structurally diverse, porous marine rocks. In contrast to the smooth planes familiar to us from traditional concrete port infrastructures, complex surfaces create the micro-currents sedentary marine species, like filter-feeding oysters, need to attach to the concrete surface. Filter feeders can have incredible impacts on water quality and clarity by removing some pollutants from the water column. For 1 linear meter of seawall, filter feeding animals like mussels, tubeworms, and oysters can filter 45 Olympic swimming pools worth of seawater, or 2.7 million liters.

The designs of traditional infrastructures, like seawalls, or interlocking single-layer armor generally don’t mimic the functionality of natural coasts. For example, these infrastructures don’t retain water at low tide, and therefore don’t provide shelter and breeding spaces for marine life. Through biomimicry and specialized design, concrete infrastructure can allow species to behave naturally, promoting thriving ecosystems in port waters.

Living infrastructure in action

In 2014, an experiment was conducted at Herzliya Marina to compare standard Portland cement and ECOncrete sea walls. ECOncrete’s sea walls differ from standard concrete walls in three ways: concrete chemistry, surface complexity, and macro-design. With this nature-inclusive engineering , ECOncrete’s sea walls reap the benefits of a mutually beneficial relationship with nature.

22 months post-deployment, the ECOncrete seawall units were covered with a variety of beneficial invertebrates, while the original marina seawall (the control wall) had a low diversity of organisms. The results show how in less than two years, ECOncrete’s technology transformed seawalls, recruiting a more diverse collection of invertebrates in comparison to standard Portland cement.

The increased number of organisms living on ECOncrete’s structure contributes to stability, thanks to wave dissipation from a rougher surface and increase durability through bioprotection.

The higher biodiversity results in a resilient, stable ecosystem, which lowers environmental mitigation and penalty costs. With its plethora of positive impacts on the environment, living infrastructures help ease the burden of strict environmental regulations.

Making sustainable seawalls a reality

Ports are key actors in driving environmentally and structurally sound waterfronts. The Port of Vigo in Spain, for example, is partnering with ECOncrete to showcase a new standard for port infrastructure.

In the LIVING PORTS project, the Port of Vigo, Cardama Shipyards, DTU and ECOncrete are working to showcase ready-for-market, ecological infrastructure, and to incorporate this new standard into marine construction best practices. In taking advantage of this opportunity to transition to environmentally friendly concrete, the Port of Vigo is closer to reaching its ambitious goal of zero carbon emissions by 2030 .

As the biggest fishing port in the word, the implementation of living infrastructure at the Port of Vigo will revitalize marine ecosystems and help trailblaze a new generation of port leadership.

Case Study: Reconciling Natural Habitats at Brooklyn Bridge Park

Study Duration: 2013-2016

This case study is for landscape architects, engineers, and asset owners, who would like to understand more about how ECOncrete^Ⓡ’s technologies are integrated into projects and deliver a unique return on investment. By implementing a technology that makes concrete environmentally beneficial, projects enjoy facilitated permitting, lower mitigation penalties, and streamlined construction, not to mention the value that comes with thriving waterfront ecosystems. While ECOncrete’s technology can be applied to any marine concrete, this pilot project was the first to validate ECOncrete’s technologies when applied to coastal armor and pile jackets.

Problem & Solution

Project Details

Brooklyn Bridge Park is a post-industrial 85-acre public space on the Brooklyn side of the East River. An environmental initiative has revitalized the park’s 1.3-mile (2.1 km) waterfront, and, as part of its renovation, ECOncrete installed two projects that serve the local aquatic ecosystem and retrofit critical infrastructure. At Pier 4, ECOncrete installed precast coastal armor units within the existing riprap to provide shore stabilization and increase biodiversity. The water-retaining coastal armor units hold a volume of thirteen gallons (fifty-nine liters) of seawater each, mimicking the intertidal habitats of natural rock pools and providing shelter for species at low tide. The armor units were placed between the mean low and mean high water lines to accommodate an array of species typically absent from standard riprap.

At Pier 6, ECOncrete designed a concrete jacket to encase the pier’s wooden piles and offer a substrate for the buildup of marine life. Textured forms give the jacket a rough surface and dimensionality, effectively encouraging marine life like oysters and tubeworms to easily attach and grow. Both the coastal armor and pile jackets, like any ECOncrete solution, support a wide array of biodiversity critical for a healthy marine system and can be adapted to promote specific species of conservational value.

Biological Monitoring

The study compared ECOncrete’s tide pool-like coastal armoring to the rocky area surrounding them. After nine months, in August 2014, the Pier 4 coastal armor units showed 89%-100% live cover. Various algae, copepods, amphipods, isopods, and Sabellidae and Spirorbis worms covered the armor. In addition, the tide-pools contained two Harris mud crabs (Rhithropanopeus harrisii) and seventeen post-larval and juvenile fish. In contrast, the rocky area surrounding the pools had poor biological functioning.

The study also compared ECOncrete’s jackets to Portland-cement and fiberglass based jackets. Monitoring at three, ten, and fourteen months post-deployment revealed 70%-100% live cover on ECOncrete’s pile jackets. In comparison, the control jackets presented only 20%-50% live cover and only one-tenth of the biomass accumulation shown on ECOncrete’s jackets. There were significant amounts of filter-feeding organisms on the ECOncrete pile jackets, such as barnacles, sessile polychaetes, sponges, and bivalves, which contribute to improving the local water quality. Several blue crabs (Callinectes sapidus) mated on the jackets, and ecosystem engineering species, such as barnacles and sessile polychaetes, were found. In addition to creating the basis for a thriving ecosystem, these sessile, or sedentary marine creatures cement their calcium carbonate shells to the concrete, and build an additional layer of protection from hydrodynamic forces and chloride penetration, known as bioprotection. This layer leads to reduced maintenance costs and a more durable pile jacket. A hands-on (level II) inspection conducted by CH2MHILL engineers a year post-deployment found hard and sound concrete.

More resources:

Epoch Times article

Meet Environmental Goals with Waterfront Construction

Building green

Williamsburg is a densely populated patch of Brooklyn, sitting just 13 inches above sea level with over 150,000 people living in 2 square miles. If you look at the shoreline, a pattern seems to be emerging: industrial waterfront space is being transformed into green space. One waterfront industrial site perched on the East River has been scoped out for redevelopment and rezoned from industrial to residential. The industrial plots are the planned home of the River Ring project, a two-building high-rise complex.

The River Ring project is an example of reconciliation ecology, the act of restoring and preserving nature in human-dominated spaces. With many urban centers adopting ambitious climate resiliency goals, more nature-inclusive general plans, and directing funding towards these efforts, effective ways of building with nature are in need.

The developers of this complex are building for a new era: meeting the threat of rising sea levels as well as community demands for green space and housing equity. A “new approach to urban resiliency”, River Ring serves a trio of needs: structural, social, and environmental. It protects properties from floods, reuses wastewater, and restores urban marine habitats. Not only was the park designed to rebuild green space, but also to make the area more livable for the local community: the project includes a new YMCA, designated affordable homes, and direct input from the community regarding the design of the park.

Reconciliation ecology in urban waterfronts

On land, examples of urban construction and development to recreate natural habitats are everywhere. Urban farms, green walls, parks and pocket gardens have all shown important progress in bringing the environment, and it’s important economic and climate-change protection impacts, into our cities. In the River Ring Project, for example, park space and an urban farm are supplemented by marsh plantings.

Along our developed waterfronts, however, coastal infrastructure, over 70% of which is built with Portland-cement-based concrete, replaces natural habitats with structures that are hostile to marine organisms and ecosystems. This systematic replacement and degradation of our coastal ecosystems leaves urban waterfronts more at risk to flooding and wave energy, lowers water quality, and reduces opportunities to explore and enjoy out oceans.

By redesigning the materials and methods used to develop our urban shores, critical concrete infrastructure can become a tool for underwater reconciliation ecology, helping developers and architects meet climate action goals and lower environmental mitigation costs.

Building with nature

Located on the East River in New York with a 1.3 mile waterfront, the Brooklyn Bridge Park used to be a “monofunctional industrial waterfront site” with “ugly warehouses that were leaking… [and] concrete and asphalt that were sinking” in some places. With creativity and community input, the site was revamped into a public park and important urban and marine habitat.

At Pier 4, the Park installed ECOncrete coastal armor in the existing riprap to improve shore stabilization and increase biodiversity. The coastal armor is modelled after natural tidepools, providing shelter for marine life during low tide and breeding habitat for local species. With valuable water retaining features that are absent from typical armored shorelines, building with environmentally sound marine infrastructure provides ecological and structural value to the Park.

At Pier 6, ECOncrete’s concrete jackets encased decaying wooden piles. The jackets allowed species such as oysters and tubeworms to attach to and thrive on the structure, setting the foundation for even more species of conservational value.

Nature’s return on investment

Native plants and animals play an important role in ecosystems: they keep other species’ populations in check and manage vegetative growth, and support balanced biodiversity. When the park chose to use ECOncrete’s technology to retrofit their waterfront infrastructure, they saw the return of the native Blue Crab, including breeding pairs on the habitat created by the jackets.

At the Pier 4 tidepools, 89-100% of the coastal armors’ surface was covered in life, like algae, amphipods, isopods, oysters, and tubeworms. When species like these return to our waterfronts, they not only revive underwater ecosystems ( with effects like improving water quality by up to 16X), but also strengthen infrastructure with an added layer of calcium-carbonate based armor. These benefits pay back in spades: improving local water quality, creating opportunities for citizen science and educational programs, and creating waterfronts more resilient to climate change.

As calcitic organisms grow on concrete, they absorb and store carbon dioxide in their skeletons. Coralline algae grows in branch-like bunches on pile jackets, and along with the other calcitic organisms, like clams and barnacles, generates an active carbon sink, storing 300 grams of CO₂ per square meter. The sea sponges, mussels, and oysters growing on the armor are also actively filtering water; 1 square meter of ECOncrete can support the filtration of 96.2 olympic swimming pools worth of seawater every year.

With over 5 million visitors in the summer of 2019, Brooklyn Bridge Park is living proof of the impacts of living infrastructure. By building with nature, developers, engineers, and architects don’t have to choose between building effectively, and building sustainably.

Case Study: Ecological Breakwater Infrastructure for Ports

Study Duration: 2013 – 2016

This case study is for landscape architects, engineers, and asset owners who would like to deepen their knowledge of the environmental performance differences between ECOncrete®’s solutions and traditional concrete. While ECOncrete’s technology can be applied to any marine concrete, this installation was a pilot project to study the technology’s ecological performance in breakwater armoring units. Since this pilot, ECOncrete’s technology package has been used to develop a variety of armoring units for projects ranging from offshore applications to urban shoreline protection measures.

Problem & Solution

Project Details

The breakwater at the Port of Haifa was constructed with traditional cube-shaped Portland cement armor units, called antifers. ECOncrete applied its 3-part design strategy to engineer an armoring unit that would perform as an ecologically friendly and structurally sound alternative. 15 ECOncrete concrete armor units were installed among the traditional cement antifers to compare their ecological performance.

Project Monitoring

The two-year study (2013-2015) compared ECOncrete’s armoring units to the port’s existing antifer units. At the end of the monitoring period, ECOncrete’s armoring units were covered in double the species richness and biodiversity than the Portland cement antifer units. The biodiverse marine life present on ECOncrete’s units included various species of oysters, sponges, sessile worms like Sabellidae and Serpulidae, tunicates, bryozoans, and coralline algae. Throughout the monitoring period, these ecological communities contributed to water filtration and habitat complexity, and attracted native fish species. ECOncrete’s armoring units contained higher fish diversity than the antifer units, as well as post-larval stages of transient fish (Sparidae). During the monitoring period, as many as two-thirds of the species on ECOncrete’s armoring units were local, with the rest being invasive. In contrast, invasive species were significantly more dominant on the antifer units by the end of monitoring.

Of the calcitic organisms growing on the units, species like oysters, corals, and barnacles cemented their calcitic skeletons onto the concrete. These creatures create an additional layer of protection from hydrodynamic forces and chloride penetration, thus leading to reduced maintenance costs and a more durable armoring unit. This protective layer also has an additional benefit: when the organisms create their shells, they draw carbon dioxide from the water, creating an active carbon sink. When growing on a one-kilometer-long by seven-meter-high seawall, for example, the calcitic organisms on ECOncrete’s technology can generate a carbon sink equivalent to 100 trees every year.

Reducing the Carbon Footprint of Concrete Based Marine Infrastructure

Coastal Development and Shrinking Marine Habitat – a Problem for All

Nearly 60% of the human population lives along coastlines. As more people migrate to coastal urban centers, increasing coastal development and urbanization is inevitable. At the same time, climate change risks like flooding and stronger storms are already creating immense challenges.

Pressures from water and land are squeezing our coasts; they come with serious implications not only for marine infrastructures and industries but also for the people and the coastal organisms that live there—the long-term effects of losing critical coastal systems will ripple out globally.

Structures like seawalls, breakwaters, and offshore wind turbine bases are often built to blunt the effects of rising seas and a changing climate, yet their manufacture and construction contribute to our carbon crisis.

Emissions in Concrete Manufacturing

Concrete accounts for 8% of global carbon dioxide emissions, and is used in 70% of marine infrastructures. The production process of concrete, made largely with cement, produces a significant carbon footprint in 2 main ways:

The use of fossil fuels to kiln-fire limestone into quicklime.
The large quantities of carbon dioxide released during calcination (the chemical transition of limestone to quicklime; CaCO3 → CaO).

Between 50-60% of the CO2 produced is during calcination. The remaining carbon dioxide emissions are a result of the fossil fuels used to power this conversion process. According to the Portland Cement Association, for every 10 kg (22 lbs) of Portland Cement produced in the U.S., 9 kg (20 lbs) of CO2 are emitted.

Emissions Post Deployment: Losing Carbon Sinks

Concrete’s carbon footprint continues to grow after production. Concrete not only displaces natural habitats, but also impairs the ability of marine life to regrow at the installation site. Why is this relevant to carbon emissions?

The oceans are a massive carbon sink (i.e. systems that store more CO2 than they release). When most people think of carbon sinks, they think of ecosystems like the Amazon or Boreal forests, famously dubbed the “lungs of the earth”. Our oceans, however, also function as one of the world’s most important carbon sequestration sites, removing approximately 30% of current anthropogenic CO2 emissions.

One way in which the ocean stores carbon dioxide is through a process called carbonation. Carbonation (also called mineralization) happens when CO2 combines with calcium—converting carbon dioxide into calcium carbonate (CaCO₃): the same material as limestone, chalk, and oyster shells. When many sedentary species of marine life grow, they assimilate carbon dioxide and calcium into their skeletons. Species like oysters, corals, tube worms, coralline algae, and barnacles have vast potential to store the greenhouse gas in their shells. When coastal ecosystems are disrupted with concrete infrastructure, these marine creatures lose their habitats and no longer capture carbon to the same degree.

10% of the sea is coastal, and 90% of marine species live in coastal waters. Losing these ecosystems and their productivity will not only impact marine food webs by reducing breeding habitat, feeding grounds, and growing spaces for our most iconic and productive marine ecosystems (sea grass, mangroves, coral reefs, oyster reefs), but will also impact the services we humans receive from ecosystems, like reduction of wave energy, food, and climate regulation.

Lowering Concrete’s Emissions

One way to reduce embodied CO2 is to use less carbon-intensive cement. Byproducts of other industries can step in, replacing Portland cement with fly ash or slag cement, which contains granulated blast furnace slag (GGBS). When slag cement replaces 50% of the Portland cement in a mix, there is a 45% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions per cubic yard of concrete. For example, a Canadian startup, CarbonCure, have developed an innovative method of producing concrete that traps carbon dioxide emissions and binds it within the concrete forever, while at the same time reducing the amount of cement used to make concrete. Nanotek on the other hand, developed revolutionary technology in sustainable cement production. They transform Portland cement into Nano cement. The technology gives the opportunity to reduce CO2, NOX, and SO2 emissions by 2-3 times per ton of cement and have production cost savings of over 30%. Their Nanotechnology results in high-performance cement and concrete, that are more sustainable, and do not call for heavy reconstruction of cement facilities.

Another way to reduce CO2 emissions is by incorporating unique additives into concrete mixes, such as ECOncrete’s admixture, which is composed of 92% recycled materials that would otherwise end up in landfills. When incorporated at 10% of the cementitious materials in a mix, and used in combination with 60% slag cement or fly ash, ECOncrete’s admix can reduce the carbon footprint of marine infrastructure by up to 70%.

ECOncrete addresses a global need: lowering the footprint of one of the hardest materials to decarbonize, concrete. Within the marine construction industry, the need to reduce concrete infrastructure’s environmental footprint is acute.

ECOncrete’s Eco-Engineered Technology

Traditional concrete marine infrastructures have three design failures that lead to a low diversity of marine life, and poor biological productivity. When changes are made to three features, biodiverse marine life can thrive on concrete, and infrastructure can actively store carbon dioxide.

Chemical composition – Traditional concrete is known to be toxic to many marine organisms, mainly due to its surface chemistry. When free-floating marine larvae (the juvenile states of some sedentary organisms like tubeworms) attempt to settle on concrete, inhospitable surface chemistry discourages them. Instead, invasive species can more easily colonize and tilt the balance towards an unhealthy ecosystem.
Surface texture – Traditional marine infrastructures have flat-plane, homogeneous surfaces. Ocean currents sweep past these flat, dense planes. This is because, unlike rough natural marine surfaces, smooth concrete doesn’t provide the micro-turbulences larvae need to be slowly propelled to a growth point and attach.
3-D design – Generic infrastructures have little consideration for the lifestyles of their marine neighbors. Species like octopuses and fish look for nooks and crannies to take shelter from predators, breed, and hunt for food. Species that thrive in intertidal zones (often constructed as ripraps or revetments) like sea anemones or shrimp, rely on water-retaining zones, such as tidepools.

ECOncrete also enables active carbon sinks to develop by enabling the aforementioned carbonation process to occur on structures themselves. The three part technology enables marine organisms that perform carbonation to grow. By providing a suitable substrate that encourages growth of marine plants and animals, which in turn provide habitat for a diverse range of marine organisms, including urchins, whelks, bivalves and other shelled organisms, carbon dioxide is naturally assimilated into the oceans, eventually sinking to the ocean floor when these organisms die. ECOncrete®‘s innovative solution also contributes to these processes by bringing concrete infrastructure to life, generating rich and diverse urban marine habitats teeming with fish, oysters, sponges and alike. ECOncrete®’s modified concrete also encourages growth of engineering species such as oysters, corals, and barnacles, whose calcium carbonate skeletons not only acts as a sink for carbon dioxide, but also increase the strength and durability of concrete structures to which they adhere.

When applied to the potential of marine infrastructure projects, the impact is massive. For example, a 1 km long ECOncrete seawall can store the same amount of CO2 every year as 100 trees. To provide more context, the U.S. is planning to construct 35,101.5 miles of climate-adaptation seawalls by 2040. If all of those seawalls were built with ECOncrete, it would be the carbon equivalent of reforesting an area 20X the size of New York City entirely in tropical rainforest.

Win-Win Solutions

For clients like offshore asset owners, urban waterfront managers, and more, ECOncrete can facilitate compliance with strict environmental regulations and climate action goals. By creating a carbon-storing ecosystem on infrastructure, ECOncrete can facilitate permitting, getting critical projects in the water faster, and reducing mitigation penalties by up to 80%.

These benefits are abundantly clear in New York City’s Living Breakwaters project. The chain of nearshore breakwaters are designed to nourish Staten Island’s beaches, while buffering damage from the next Hurricane Sandy. In this project, the ecological design which includes ECOncrete’s technologies dropped mitigation penalties from $18 million dollars to just $4 million.

When building protections against a changing climate, or innovating ways to reduce concrete’s carbon footprint, it’s time to build not only for strong infrastructure, but also for strong ecosystems.

It’s time to build responsibly.