Three years ago, a hurricane devastated the Bahamas, claiming dozens of lives. Today, the country is building what it claims is the world’s first carbon-negative housing community to reduce the likelihood of future climate disasters and ease the storm-induced housing shortage.
Rick Fox, former Los Angeles Lakers player, is the star of the new housing project. The former basketball player and citizen of the Bahamas was spurred into action after losing his home during Hurricane Dorian in 2019. Fox teamed up with architect Sam Marshall, whose Malibu home was destroyed by wildfires in 2018, to develop Partanna , a building material that removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
The technology is being tested in the Bahamas, where Fox’s company, Partanna Bahamas, is working with the government to build 1,000 hurricane-resistant homes, including single-family homes and apartments. The first 30 units will be delivered next year to the Abaco Islands, which were hardest hit by Dorian.
“Innovation and new technology will play a critical role in avoiding worst-case climate scenarios,” said Philip Davis, Prime Minister of the Bahamas, in a statement. He is set to formally announce the partnership between the Government of The Bahamas and Partana Bahamas on Wednesday at the COP27 climate summit in Egypt.
As a country on the front lines of the climate crisis, the Bahamas understands it is “out of time,” Fox told CNN Business. “They don’t have time to wait for someone to save them,” he added.
“Technology can turn the tide, and at Partanna we’ve developed a solution that can change the way the world is built,” Fox said.
Partanna consists of natural and recycled ingredients, including steel slag, a byproduct of steelmaking, and desalination brine. It is free of resins and plastics and avoids the pollution associated with cement production, which accounts for approximately 4%-8% of global carbon emissions from human activities.
Using brine, meanwhile, helps solve the desalination industry’s growing waste problem by preventing the toxic solution from being dumped back into the ocean.
Almost all buildings naturally absorb carbon dioxide through a process called carbonization – where CO2 in the air reacts with minerals in the concrete – but Partanna says her houses remove carbon from the atmosphere at a much faster rate because of the material’s density .
The material also emits almost no carbon during manufacture.
A 1,250-square-foot Partanna home will contribute a “negligible amount” of CO2 during construction, while removing 22.5 tons of CO2 from the atmosphere after production, making it “completely carbon negative over the product’s life cycle,” according to the company.
In comparison, a typical cement dwelling of the same size typically produces 70.2 tons of CO2 during production.
The use of salt water means that Partanna homes are also resistant to corrosion from sea water, making them ideal for residents of small island countries such as the Bahamas. This could make it easier for homeowners to get insurance.
The carbon credits generated by each home will be traded and used to fund various social impact initiatives, including promoting home ownership to low-income families.
