The Innovators: Nexii has concrete plans to curb carbon emissions in construction

Having invented a low-carbon alternative to concrete, the company is now reimagining the whole building process.

Credit: Nexii

Nexii makes a lower-carbon alternative to concrete

Having invented a low-carbon alternative to concrete, the company is now reimagining the whole building process

Green building? It’s still mostly an oxymoron. Building and construction accounted for almost 40 percent of all energy-related carbon emissions as of 2017, the World Green Building Council estimates. And don’t get us started on landfill: annual construction waste will hit 2 billion tonnes by 2025, according to U.S.-headquartered Transparency Market Research, almost double the total for 2018.

Nexii Building Solutions aims to help change that. The Vancouver-based company’s proprietary building material, Nexiite, is a lower-carbon alternative to concrete. Nexii also offers what it calls a “whole building solution” for properties ranging from commercial to single-family; most work takes place offsite, resulting in faster construction, less waste and lower local impact. Its buildings, assembled from panels, are highly energy-efficient, too.

Led by Stephen Sidwell, who previously founded healthy frozen food startup Luvo, Nexii recently welcomed two high-profile board members: Michael Burke, chair and CEO of U.S. infrastructure giant AECOM; and Ronald Sugar, chair of Uber Technologies and an Apple director. To meet customer demand, the 105-employee business, which has a plant in Moose Jaw, Sask., is expanding stateside. It’s now building four new facilities, in Squamish, Alberta, Ontario and Pennsylvania.

In December, Nexii announced that it had constructed Canadas first sustainably built Starbucks drive-through location of its kind. The Abbotsford store is designed to shrink carbon emissions by 30 percent.