What is Embodied Carbon?
- What is Embodied Carbon?
- Inflation Reduction Act
- Grant Program
- Tools, Resources and Funding Opportunities
- Label Program for Low Embodied Carbon Construction Materials
Embodied carbon—also known as embodied greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions—refers to the amount of GHG emissions associated with upstream—extraction, production, transport, and manufacturing—stages of a product’s life. Many initiatives to track, disclose, and reduce embodied carbon emissions also consider emissions associated with the use of a product and its disposal.
Embodied Carbon of Construction Materials
In the United States, billions of tons of concrete, asphalt, steel, glass and other construction materials and products are required to construct, maintain and operate the built environment. The built environment includes roads, highways, bridges, buildings and houses, schools, and parks, among other infrastructure. While construction materials and products have numerous social and economic benefits, they currently have significant environmental costs. The U.S. industrial sector is linked to nearly a third of annual U.S. greenhouse (GHG) emissions, and the manufacturing of construction materials and products accounts for 15% of annual global GHG emissions.
Reducing embodied carbon from construction materials is essential to effectively addressing climate change.
How Can Public Procurement Address Embodied Carbon of Construction Materials?
To help achieve net zero emissions for the federal government by 2050, the Biden-Harris Administration launched the Federal Buy Clean Initiative, which leverages federal procurement and funding to catalyze markets for American-made lower embodied carbon construction materials while making historic investments to upgrade U.S. transportation, buildings and energy infrastructure.
EPA is joined by twelve other federal agencies on the Buy Clean Task Force, who together account for 90% of all federally-financed and purchased construction materials.
Agencies are working to identify actions to reduce GHG emissions and climate change impacts comprehensively, including optimizing salvage, reuse, and low embodied carbon materials, as well as strategies such as siting buildings and infrastructure to minimize disruptions to land use and restore natural ecosystems, for example.
Increasingly states, local governments and large public and private sector institutions have also adopted Buy Clean initiatives and policies to reduce embodied carbon emissions from the construction materials in their supply chains. Buy Clean policies and programs related to construction materials generally require disclosures of the environmental - and especially the embodied carbon - impacts of these products. These impacts are typically disclosed through Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs).
The Inflation Reduction Act enables EPA and partner agencies to develop strategies to support enhanced standardization, measurement, reporting and verification of Environmental Product Declarations to drive the market of lower embodied carbon construction materials.