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Dive brief:
- The Environmental Protection Agency has call for subsidies for 38 beneficiaries across the country, totaling nearly $160 million, to support efforts to report and reduce climate pollution from the manufacturing of building materials and products, he announced on July 16.
- The money, which comes from the Inflation reduction law, will help the construction industry to produce greener materials. The EPA estimates that construction materials used in buildings and other built infrastructure account for more than 15 percent of annual greenhouse gas emissions, according to the release.
- The grants will be awarded to companies, universities and non-profit organizations across the country and will help reveal the environmental impacts associated with the manufacture of concrete, asphalt, glass, steel, wood and other materials.
Diving knowledge:
The grants, which range from $250,000 to $10 million, will help companies develop robust, high-quality environmental product statements that show environmental impacts throughout a product’s lifetime. These initiatives have the potential to create more sustainable purchasing decisions, the EPA said, by allowing shoppers to more easily compare the carbon impacts of products.
Investments in data and tools will make such statements available for 14 material categories, which include new and recovered or reused materials, the agency said.
The federal government has focused on environmentally conscious upgrades to America’s infrastructure. The General Services Administration, for example, has plans upgrade 38 federal land ports of entry along the country’s northern and southern borders using $1 billion in IRA and Jobs and Infrastructure Investment Act funds to electrify buildings, pave with low-carbon concrete and otherwise upgrade facilities with more ecological materials.
“Investing in low-carbon building materials is an essential part of our work to address climate change,” Delaware Sen. Tom Carper, chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said in the press release.
Some building-oriented recipients include:
- A Georgia company to receive funding to report emissions savings from switching from carbon-intensive components in cement and concrete to recycled and innovative materials.
- A project in Maine that will help a company that makes insulation made from wood fiber track the amount of energy and raw materials used in each of its processes.
- A project in Illinois that will help a nonprofit that sells repurposed architectural materials measure how much reclaimed materials reduce carbon emissions.
- A major university that will use grant funds to research and document carbon savings from structural steel reuse.
- Several projects that will support workforce development to increase the number of sustainable construction professionals available to support these important efforts.
Environmental issues are a growing problem for the construction industry. Road builders, for example, must consider how climate change, with extreme weather and rising sea levels, they can affect the roads.
Contractors are taking up the challenge, including New York City-based Turner Construction, which pledged to fleet of electric vehicles by 2028 and is piloting low-emission equipment in some of its projects.
