India faces a significant challenge in providing affordable housing due to rapid population growth and urbanization, with concrete being a primary construction material. However, concrete production has a high environmental impact, particularly in CO2 emissions. The ZeCRoCo project aims to enhance the environmental sustainability of a 28-storey social housing building by focusing on two main areas: reduction of Embodied Carbon and reduction of Operational Carbon. The project explores eco- friendly concrete by substituting 20% of cement with Rice Husk Ash (RHA), maintaining traditional concrete properties while reducing carbon emissions by 12.5%.
The project evaluates insulation materials from rice byproducts, i.e. rice straw (RS) and rice husk (RH), showing that added insulation can significantly improve indoor conditions and lower energy consumption during the build lifetime. Through an in-depth Life-Cycle-Approach (LCA) and Life-Cycle-Cost (LCC) analysis, the project considers the entire lifespan of the building showing a reduction of 38.6% of the overall carbon emissions maintaining low costs.
The project aims at integrating solutions and community needs and effectively involving regional facilities and local suppliers to reduce transportation costs and emissions. The ZeCRoCo project successfully integrates sustainable practices into prefabrication techniques, hence introducing the Precast Concrete Construction (PCC) technique in the favorable Indian market. It serves as a blueprint for future developments in India, promoting sustainability and resilience in affordable housing initiatives.
The project represents a particularly complex challenge as it seeks to innovate and make sustainable production processes with very low technological content and added value such as those of heavy concrete prefabrication for the construction sector. Furthermore, the application context is represented by a particularly complex reality from the socio- economic point of view and the organization of production processes and the supply chain such as India. Through a trans-disciplinary approach, the team managed to overcome the limits of prefabrication and materials normally used, identifying significant supply chain, technical, construction and production innovations which synergistically contribute to obtaining environmental and social benefits with reference also to the local economy and end users. Benefits that will amplify with the evolution of user demand, clearly clarified by in-depth analyzes of current trends. As requested by the partner company that had proposed the topic of investigation, the project is able to reconcile technology, materials, typology, morphology and social aspects, while preserving the cost-effectiveness and affordability of the housing solution, obtaining potential environmental, social and economic benefits also measured through specific indicators.