Builders Merchants Journal – BMJ Publishing to Builders Merchants and the UK merchanting industry for more than 95 years
Dutch manhole maker Kijlistra has hit back at speculation that its carbon emission claims for concrete manholes are flawed.
Kijlstra had claimed that its manhole, that can typically be installed up to 16 times more quickly than traditional systems on standard units, was also up to 65% more carbon efficient.
However, this has been questioned by the Concrete Pipeline Systems Association.
Following the CPSA’s concerns, Carbon Clear’s MD Jamal Gore said: “The benefit of carrying out a standards compliant audit is that it requires a specified procedure and requires the client to be upfront and transparent about its assumptions and data sources. As a result, anyone who reviews it should be able to evaluate the assumptions and, using the same data sources, arrive at the same answer. That allows like-for-like comparisons between products using similar assumptions and data sources.”
Kijlstra had commissioned research by Carbon Clear to quantify the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the production and installation of its square pre-cast concrete manholes. The report reveals the emissions per Kijlstra unit ranged from 0.4 to 2.3 tonnes CO2e compared to 1.2 to 4.5 tonnes for traditional installations.
The report compared three sizes of Kijlstra and traditional manholes to depths of two, four and six metres in the areas of raw materials, transportation to installation site and other activities such as energy consumption, waste and inbound delivery of materials.
Independently conducted to international standards ISO 14064 and PAS 2050, the report is the first stage of a commercially focused carbon management plan that will enable Kijlstra to offset the emissions from all its UK installations to help projects throughout the world, making its manholes carbon neutral.
Kijlstra’s precast product is manufactured in the factory and transported whole to site, compared to traditional systems which are partly made in the factory and partly produced on-site with poured concrete. As a result the Kijlstra system vastly reduces both the volumes of concrete required to complete an installation but also makes installation time much faster compared to a traditional system
The Kijlstra product weighs between 2.5 and 14.3 tonnes installed compared to traditional ones of between 7.7 and 27.2 tonnes and the Kijlstra product replaces up to 40% of cement with slag – waste product with lower associated carbon emissions (the actual recipe is protected intellectual property).
