By Emily Pontecorvo for Grist.
Broadcast version by Alex Gonzalez for Arizona News Connection reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration

Block-Lite is a small concrete manufacturer in an industrial corridor of Flagstaff, Arizona. The third-generation family business makes bricks and other masonry materials for retaining walls, driveways, and landscaping projects. The company was already a local leader in sustainability — in 2020, it became the first manufacturer in Flagstaff to power its operations with on-site solar panels. But now it’s doing something much more ambitious.

On Tuesday, Block-Lite announced a pioneering collaboration with climate tech startups Aircapture and CarbonBuilt to suck carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and stash it in concrete blocks. The companies estimate the project will reduce the carbon footprint of Block-Lite’s products by 70 percent, creating a model they hope could reshape the industry.

Concrete creates an enormous problem for the climate. It’s one of the literal building blocks of society, and it has been growing more carbon intensive each year. Most of that carbon doesn’t come from manufacturing concrete, but from the production of its main ingredient, cement. Cement production is responsible for some 10 percent of industrial carbon emissions in the U.S. 

CarbonBuilt has developed a solution that addresses the issue in two distinct ways. First, the company found a proprietary way to replace cement with a mix of inexpensive, locally-sourced industrial waste materials. CEO Rahul Shendure told Grist they include common byproducts of coal plants, steelmaking, and chemical production that would, for the most part, otherwise be destined for landfills. The company’s second feat is the way its equipment hardens that slurry into concrete blocks — by curing it with carbon dioxide. That’s where Aircapture comes in. The company will build one of its machines which extract carbon dioxide from the ambient air directly on Block-Lite’s site.

“Our technology is pretty flexible in where we source CO2 from,” said Shendure. “The thing that’s different about this project in particular is that we’re sourcing the carbon dioxide from direct air capture technology.”

It’s an idea that a handful of other companies are pursuing. In February, a similar partnership between another direct air capture company called Heirloom and concrete startup CarbonCure demonstrated its process for the first time. This also isn’t CarbonBuilt’s first project — the company is retrofitting a concrete plant in Alabama called Blair Block. In that case, the CO2 will come from burning biomass in a boiler.

The Flagstaff project is breaking ground, in part, thanks to a $150,000 grant from the Four Corners Carbon Coalition, a group of local governments throughout the Southwest that pool resources to finance projects that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The coalition was born of the realization that communities with ambitious goals to become carbon neutral will likely need to invest in such solutions, many of which are still embryonic. 

“If one local government tries to do this on their own, it’s gonna be extremely costly and time intensive, and we don’t have the technical expertise,” Susie Strife, the sustainability director for Boulder County, Colorado, a founding member of the coalition, said in an interview with Grist last year. “We’re trying to aggregate resources and create a sort of a local government platform for carbon dioxide removal.”

In addition to that funding, Shendure said the company plans to sell carbon credits for the CO2 that Aircapture’s equipment pulls out of the atmosphere, as well as for the carbon reductions from using less cement. “We’ve got a letter of intent from a buyer and that’s going to be critical to this project,” he said. “There’s a lot of companies right now that are paying premium credit prices for emerging technologies so that we get more of these out there in the real world.”

Block-Lite did not respond to Grist’s inquiry, but in a press release, the company suggested that the new concrete products would be no costlier than its current offerings. “All too often sustainable building materials require a trade off between cost and performance, but what is unique about this project is that there’s no ‘green premium.’” Block-Lite said. “We’re going to be able to produce on-spec, ultra-low carbon blocks at price parity with traditional blocks which should speed adoption and impact.”


Emily Pontecorvo wrote this article for Grist.


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The Trump administration's long-term plan for artificial intelligence could have far-reaching environmental impacts across the country.

His strategy calls for the removal of land use rules considered prohibitive to the construction of AI data centers. Last year, then Gov. Eric Holcomb announced Microsoft would invest $1 billion to establish a new AI data center in Laporte to generate cloud computing infrastructure.

Ben Murray, senior researcher for the advocacy group Food and Water Watch, said fossil fuel plants are already being reopened to help meet high energy demands.

"We just need to be aware that anything that prolongs our reliance on fossil fuel is going to increase the problems that we're seeing from the climate crisis," Murray explained.

Murray argued high-tech progress should not come at the expense of increased household energy prices. Residents' support is low due to concerns about increased traffic and noise near the centers. The Trump administration said environmental and permitting regulations will only slow America's dominance in the AI field.

A report last year found emissions from data centers owned by Apple, Google, Meta and Microsoft were more than seven times higher than officially reported. Computer servers using AI require far more energy than those without. A ChatGPT query, for example, can use up to 10 times more electricity than a standard Google search.

"These companies can seem as if they're decreasing their emissions and meeting net-zero goals but in reality, the emissions are amping up faster than ever for these companies," Murray pointed out.

Murray noted the push for more data centers is already leading Big Tech companies to backtrack on their climate goals. It is possible to power AI services with renewable energy sources, he added, but doing so requires political will.

As of June 2025, a 1,200-acre corn and soybean field just outside of New Carlisle has turned into eight Amazon-led AI energy centers. The tech giant plans to construct a total of 30 at the site.


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After one year, Washington's first comprehensive bee survey has documented 15 species that have never been collected in the state before.

The project is cataloguing native bees, which includes nearly all species in the state, but excludes honeybees.

Karla Salp is a communications consultant with the Washington State Department of Agriculture's Washington Bee Atlas program, which conducted the survey.

She said the data will serve as a baseline to track bee populations.

"The reason why this is happening in the first place is to answer the question, how are pollinators doing in Washington state?" said Salp. "And the answer is we don't know, because we've never actually looked at even what bees we have throughout the state."

Salp said the project also involves compiling a list of plants that each bee species pollinates so residents can make their yards more attractive to these beneficial insects.

As honeybee numbers continue to decline rapidly, Salp explained that native pollinators may become more important to Washington's agriculture.

"Knowing what native pollinators we have and how we can support them is really a sustainability issue" said Salp, "to make sure that whether we have honeybees here or not, there are options for pollination."

Volunteers collected over 17,000 bees on more than 600 different host plants.

Salp said the process of identifying them is slow because each one must be viewed under a microscope, and there is still considerable work to be done.

"We're expecting to find a lot more species" said Salp, "that are either rare or even new to the state. "

If people are interested in volunteering, an online application for the Bee Atlas program is available on the Washington State Department of Agriculture website.




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The Trump administration wants to overturn a conservation rule that had garnered more public comment than any in U.S. history up until that time.

Commonly known as the Roadless Rule, the U.S. Department of Agriculture regulation prohibits road construction, reconstruction, and timber harvesting on nearly 60 million acres of national forest land.

Sarah McMillan - the senior attorney and director of the Wildlands & Wildlife Program at the Western Environmental Law Center - said before it was adopted in 2001, 1.5 million people submitted comments, with the vast majority in support of the rule.

"This was a rule that was carefully, thoughtfully developed," said McMillan. "There was a long process of inventorying these roadless areas and identifying these remote, often mature and old-growth trees. This didn't happen overnight."

A rollback of the rule would allow more logging and drilling on federal lands, which McMillan said would worsen climate change, harm wildlife & vital ecosystems, jeopardize water quality, and negatively affect recreational opportunities.

The Bush administration attempted to repeal the Roadless Rule in 2005, but lost in the courts.

In announcing the proposed rollback, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins claimed more logging would improve forest management, which would in turn decrease forest fires.

But McMillan said that argument is disputed in a 2020 Wilderness Society study that found just the opposite.

"The truth is, un-roaded areas burn at a significantly lower rate than areas with roads," said McMillan. "So, fires start near roads."

McMillan said it doesn't make sense to allow private developers to log more trees when the planet is undergoing a biodiversity and climate crisis - especially because old-growth trees create a buffer against climate change.

Forests cover almost 30% of New Mexico's land area.




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