Biden-Harris Administration announces over $18 million to support clean U.S. manufacturing of construction materials across New England
Publilshed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
BOSTON (JULY 16, 2024) – Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced the selection of four recipients working in New England that will receive more than $18 million in grants to support efforts in reporting and reducing climate pollution from the manufacturing of construction materials. This is part of the nearly $160 million in grants announced nationally today. EPA estimates that the construction materials used in buildings and other built infrastructure account for more than 15 percent of annual global greenhouse gas emissions.
Billions of tons of concrete, asphalt, steel, glass and other construction materials and products are required to build, maintain, and operate our country’s buildings and infrastructure. The United States leads the world in the production of clean construction materials, and these transformative awards from President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act—the largest climate investment in history—will reduce climate pollution by helping businesses measure the carbon emissions associated with extracting, transporting, and manufacturing their products.
The grants will support the Biden-Harris Administration’s Federal Buy Clean Initiative, which leverages the U.S. Government’s sway as the largest purchaser on Earth, to catalyze demand for clean construction materials used in federal buildings, highways, and infrastructure projects. The grants will be awarded to businesses, universities, and nonprofit organizations serving all 50 states and will help disclose the environmental impacts associated with manufacturing concrete, asphalt, glass, steel, wood, and other materials.
“As America continues to build more and upgrade our nation’s infrastructure under President Biden’s leadership, cleaner construction materials like concrete and steel are increasingly essential for the nation’s prosperity,” said EPA Deputy Administrator Janet McCabe. “These historic investments will expand market access for a new generation of more climate-friendly construction materials, and further grow American jobs that are paving the way to the clean energy economy.”
“Jobs, workforce development, a healthier environment—by supporting the development and use of cleaner construction materials, we are improving the quality of life in our communities, and at the same time combatting climate change,” said Regional Administrator David W. Cash. “The innovative work being done by GO Lab in Maine means that families can insulate their homes with sustainable, non-toxic materials that also help fight climate change. And the efforts of the University of Massachusetts Amherst will ensure that the steel used in our buildings is produced with less environmental impact. These projects are paving the way for a more sustainable future, ensuring that our children and grandchildren can thrive in a cleaner and healthier New England.”
The following organizations with project activities in New England have been selected:
- GO Lab, Inc. (dba TimberHP), based in Maine, has been selected to receive $418,420.
The carbon footprint of insulation products is second only to concrete due to the materials used in its manufacture and the energy required for its production. GO Lab, Inc. (dba TimberHP), a construction insulation manufacturer, is the first in North America to produce insulation board, batt, and loose fill insulation from wood fiber. Cost-competitive, renewable, recyclable, nontoxic and carbon sequestering, insulating wood fiber composites have been manufactured at scale in Europe for over two decades but were not widely available in the United States until TimberHP’s facility in Madison, Maine commenced production in 2023.
GO Lab/TimberHP’s project focuses on developing accurate and transparent environmental products declarations (EPDs) of scalable, carbon-negative insulation products. TimberHP will install equipment and software that will enable it to comprehensively capture energy and raw material usage data and properly allocate that usage to each production line. The data will be used to support the development and publication of EPDs for each of the company’s three product lines over its first five years of production.
- University of Massachusetts Amherst has been selected to receive $6,371,426, for project activities in Amherst, Mass.; Chicago, Illinois; and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
This project will reduce the environmental impacts of domestic construction activity, steel production, and product manufacturing through increasing the quality, transparency, and geographic coverage of life cycle inventories and resultant EPDs representing steel products. The project will include the development of life cycle inventory and EPD generator tools that can automate production of steel product EPDs, create an EPD repository, and update the steel PCR. The University of Massachusetts Amherst will also provide educational resources to students and design, construction and steel industry professionals. This project seeks to identify deconstruction processes for existing structures, required tests for recovered materials, and required modifications and fabrication data to increase the use of salvaged steel products.
Project partners, including the American Iron and Steel Institute and the American Institute of Steel Construction, will help to transform the EPD landscape of the domestic steel industry. It will improve access to EPD generation for a broader range of manufacturers and fabricators, particularly small businesses, and create a public-facing EPD repository for stakeholders to access high-quality data. Through extensive educational outreach, the initiative will help build a skilled workforce, promoting sustainable practices and setting a new standard for steel product EPDs.
- Holcim US, Inc. has been selected to receive $1,371,814, for project activities in Massachusetts, as well as in Nevada, Colorado, Maryland, Utah, Texas, Oklahoma, Ohio, Illinois, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Alabama, South Caroline, Missouri, New York, and New Jersey.
In the U.S., Holcim is the largest cement manufacturer and top five producer in aggregates and ready-mix concrete, with approximately 7,000 employees. Holcim’s EPD Accelerator Project will increase the transparency of data on environmental emissions associated with the production of construction materials, generate robust EPDs with a diversity of manufacturers from across the U.S., and drive market demand for lower carbon construction materials. These projects represent the three construction materials in Holcim’s portfolio: cement, asphalt and ultra-high-performance concrete.
These projects will support the development, enhanced standardization and transparency, and reporting criteria for EPDs that include measurements of the embodied greenhouse gas emissions of the material or product associated with all relevant stages of production, use and disposal, and conform with international standards for construction materials and products.
- Oklahoma State University has been selected to receive $9,990,311, for project activities in New Hampshire, as well as in North Carolina, Puerto Rico, Alabama, Illinois, Oklahoma, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and Guam.
Oklahoma State University is leading the creation of the National Center for Sustainable Construction Materials to promote low carbon construction materials (LCCMs) and generate robust EPDs for materials such as asphalt, concrete, steel and their additives. In collaboration with 11 universities across the U.S., including the University of Illinois and University of North Carolina at Charlotte, the project will provide extensive training, create educational programs, and design tools and incentives for adopting LCCMs. It also focuses on benchmarking methods, identifying high-impact parameters beyond global warming potential, and integrating EPDs into construction specifications. The Center’s efforts include K–12 outreach and workforce development to nurture future professionals in sustainable construction.
Oklahoma State University’s project will focus on (1) establishing a national center and EPD centers of excellence at other universities; (2) facilitating training for stakeholders such as engineers, owners, material suppliers and contractors; (3) facilitating the generation of EPDs; (4) establishing a benchmarking approach; (5) identifying high-impact parameters beyond GWP; (6) working with departments of transportation and Tribes to incorporate EPDs into specifications; and (7) performing K–12 outreach and workforce development programs.
Read the summaries of proposed grantee projects (pdf) , including those of organizations working nationally.
Ranging from $250,000 to $10 million, the grants will help businesses develop robust, high-quality environmental product declarations (EPDs), which show environmental impacts across the life of a product and can catalyze more sustainable purchasing decisions by allowing buyers to compare products. Investments in data and tools will make high-quality EPDs available for 14 material categories, which include both new and salvaged or reused materials. These efforts will help standardize and expand the market for construction products with lower greenhouse gas emissions. They will make it easier for federal, state and local governments and other institutional buyers to ensure the construction projects they fund use more climate-friendly products and materials.
EPA is also announcing expanded technical assistance opportunities to businesses, the federal government, and other organizations across America. EPA will initially offer EPD development support and direct businesses to resources to help them measure and reduce the embodied carbon associated with their materials, such as those provided by the ENERGY STAR Industrial program. Federal agencies and their suppliers will be able to compare the climate impact of various materials to drive near-term greenhouse gas emissions reductions. Robust EPD data will be further strengthened by a new label program under development that will identify low carbon construction materials for the growing Buy Clean marketplace.
Together, the grants and technical assistance programs will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and support American jobs. These programs are made possible by the Biden Administration’s Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, which creates significant investments aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions associated with the extraction, transport, and manufacturing of construction materials and products. The Inflation Reduction Act also provides more than $2 billion to the General Services Administration to use low embodied carbon materials in the construction and renovation of federal buildings and $2 billion to the Federal Highway Administration to incentivize or reimburse the use of low embodied carbon construction materials in certain transportation projects.
Selections are contingent upon completion of legal and administrative requirements and grantees are tentatively expected to receive their funding in late summer.
Read the full article at: https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/biden-harris-administration-announces-over-18-million-support-clean-us-manufacturing
