Both the Biden administration and Congress recognize the importance of investing big in a clean and globally competitive industrial manufacturing base. A cornerstone of that effort is leveraging the federal government’s purchasing power to buy cleaner concrete, steel, and other industrial materials to catalyze market transformation. The Biden administration has already laid vital groundwork to do just that, issuing an executive order to establish a federal Buy Clean initiative and a Buy Clean Task Force to spearhead policy rollout, and leading agencies like the Government Services Administration (GSA) have subsequently put forward first-of-a-kind climate standards for both concrete and asphalt.
Missing from the equation has been robust funding to accelerate these efforts. Now, with roughly $5 billion in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) for federal agencies to begin procuring lower-carbon materials, Buy Clean is taking center stage. Today the Task Force announced that the federal government will prioritize low-carbon procurement across four major materials categories — steel, concrete, asphalt, and flat glass — and Secretary Buttigieg announced that he will embed Buy Clean principles into everything the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) does agency-wide, showing that the administration is serious about putting these policies to work and at a major scale. This means that an astounding 98% of materials purchased by the federal government, across both the GSA and DOT, will be in service of decarbonizing our industrial sector and infrastructure and creating green jobs. Coupled with billions in investments to retrofit industrial facilities and other incentives to slash U.S. industrial emissions, this is exactly the kind of holistic and robust federal investment in climate progress for this sector we’ve long needed.
Ultimately, Buy Clean will require all federally funded public works projects to consider the climate and other pollution impacts generated in the manufacturing of the materials they purchase and preferentially award contracts to manufacturers whose production processes yield lower emissions. In the immediate term, the U.S. DOT and particularly the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) have a unique opportunity to ensure that billions in infrastructure investments under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) go hand-in-hand with programs under the IRA to purchase clean materials. And because so many transportation infrastructure projects are built using federal funds passed through to states and metropolitan planning organizations, the role of state DOTs in implementation will be critical. There are multiple approaches that FHWA could take to encourage lower embodied emissions in widely used construction materials, both in the context of direct procurement and by incentivizing grantees to use sustainable materials throughout its programs.
Here are four key reasons why this is a big deal:
1. Agencies have a menu of implementation options to boost markets for lower carbon embodied industrial building materials.
FHWA and other agencies can help catalyze market transformation in sectors like concrete and steel by offering a ladder of options that should be applied in the development of projects and potentially specified in plans and programs:
- Requiring or encouraging use of Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) — a best-practice reporting document for measuring the embodied emissions generated during the production of industrial building materials and products;
- Establishing a carbon intensity ceiling for commonly used construction materials in public infrastructure projects;
- Awarding performance-based bonuses or other types of financial bonuses and incentives for high performers; and
- Making advanced purchasing commitments for breakthrough innovation — e.g., zero emission steel or cement
2. Meaningful GHG emissions reductions are available at modest price premiums and…
Read More: Buy Clean Takes Center Stage at U.S. DOT & Other Agencies