Build a house that can absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere Done by Lakers legend Rick Fox

In the Bahamas, a groundbreaking initiative is taking shape with the construction of a new environmentally friendly home that utilizes an innovative concrete alternative capable of removing CO2 from the atmosphere. The project, aimed at combatting climate change, is just the beginning, with plans to replicate this eco-friendly approach in the construction of 999 more homes.

Driving this ambitious endeavor is former NBA Lakers legend turned actor, Rick Fox, who now serves as the CEO and co-founder of partanna, a startup specializing in sustainable building materials. The company unveiled its very first home, designed to make a positive impact on the environment. The ultimate goal is to establish this alternative concrete as a standard building material, contributing significantly to reducing pollution resulting from construction processes.

"I shut down my entire career that was in Hollywood to pursue and create [climate] solutions," Fox stated. "I had to move around the industry that was new to me and meet people that were looking at me like, 'What the hell are you doing in concrete?'"

The choice of concrete as a focal point in the fight against climate change is significant, as conventional concrete production is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, which, in turn, intensify natural disasters such as storms and wildfires. The primary culprit is cement, a vital component of concrete that independently accounts for over 8 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions.

Rick Fox's entry into the concrete industry was born out of a necessity to address the devastation caused by Hurricane Dorian in the Bahamas in 2019, which wreaked havoc on the island of Abaco, destroying 75 percent of homes and displacing thousands of residents. Witnessing the destruction from afar, Fox was inspired to advocate for change. "The closest thing I could do was race to CNN to scream from the rooftops that we needed to do something better," he recalls.

His path crossed with California-based architect Sam Marshall, whose home had suffered damage during the 2018 Woolsey fire, one of the state's most devastating wildfires. Together with material scientists, they devised a method for producing concrete without the use of carbon-intensive cement, ultimately co-founding partanna.

Although the specifics of their process are closely guarded, the main ingredients include brine from desalination plants and a byproduct of steel production called slag. By eliminating cement from the formula, partanna can avoid the carbon dioxide emissions typically associated with its production. Cement production involves heating to high temperatures in a kiln, triggering a chemical reaction that releases additional CO2 from limestone.

partanna's concrete mixture cures at ambient temperatures, requiring less energy, and its binder ingredients absorb CO2 from the air and trap it within the material. Even if a structure made with this concrete is demolished, the material retains the absorbed CO2 and can be reused as an aggregate in producing more alternative concrete.

This unique approach enables partanna to brand its material and the newly constructed home as "carbon negative." The 1,250-square-foot structure is designed to capture as much CO2 as 5,200 mature trees each year.

While quantifying carbon capture with trees can be challenging, partanna asserts that its method is more straightforward and less vulnerable to potential offset issues, making it a more reliable and verifiable approach. Additionally, Partanna's key ingredients, slag, and brine, are sourced from energy-intensive steel and desalination facilities, which can produce significant CO2 emissions on their own. The company does not include these emissions in its carbon footprint calculation, citing them as waste materials repurposed for a positive cause.

dwarak Ravikumar, an assistant professor at the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment at Arizona State University, acknowledges the positive use of waste materials by Partanna but emphasizes the importance of a comprehensive analysis from a systems perspective to understand the overall climate impact. He encourages the company to share its data to allow researchers to assess the full environmental footprint of Partanna's approach and its scalability.

Rick Fox's initiative is not the only one focused on sustainable building materials. Microsoft recently announced its testing of low-carbon concrete for its data centers, and various startups are exploring methods to capture CO2 from the atmosphere and store it in concrete.

partanna distinguishes itself by using brine in its concrete mixture, which reportedly becomes stronger when exposed to seawater, an advantageous feature for a nation like the Bahamas, comprised of many low-lying islands vulnerable to increasingly severe storms and rising sea levels.

The Bahamian government is actively partnering with partanna to construct 1,000 homes, beginning with a community of 29 additional houses slated for completion next year. While the first home in Nassau is currently a prototype, these future residences aim to support first-time homeowners as part of a larger program to address the pressing issues of climate change.