March 21, 2022 – Industrial hemp has been used in construction since Roman times. But in the mid-twentieth century, it got lumped in with its psychoactive relative, marijuana, and innovation fell on hard times. Now, in the wake of the 2018 Farm Bill’s legalization of production, it has bounced back into the limelight—this time with a distinctive twenty-first-century twist: carbon capture. Hemp’s rapid growth, dense canopy, and ability to grow in nutrient-poor soils make the plant more efficient than trees at sequestering carbon. In construction, hemp is combined with a lime-based binder to create hempcrete, a carbon-negative biocomposite that can sequester over 100 kilograms of CO2 per square meter. Read more.
Here Comes Hempcrete
