Highlights
- The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention released the Implementation Approach for the U.S. EPA Label Program for Low Embodied Carbon Construction Materials on Aug. 7, 2024. This document provides a detailed plan for how EPA will institute a new label program to help purchasers identify construction materials and products with substantially lower levels of embodied carbon, including providing benchmarks for construction materials identifying their carbon performance relative to industry benchmarks.
- The plan supports multiple federal procurement objectives collectively known as "Buy Clean" that prioritize the use of American-made, lower-carbon construction materials in federal procurement and federally funded projects, such as concrete, steel, glass and asphalt. A process for wood products, insulation, aluminum, gypsum and roofing materials may follow in the coming years.
- Though the plan represents a critical step forward, EPA notes the label program will take upward of two years before the first labeled products are available. This Holland & Knight alert reviews the plan and next steps in the development of the labeling program.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is creating a label program to help purchasers identify construction materials and products with substantially lower levels of embodied carbon. EPA released the Implementation Approach for the U.S. EPA Label Program for Low Embodied Carbon Construction Materials on Aug. 7, 2024 (Label Program). The Label Program was developed as a result of President Joe Biden's federal Buy Clean Task Force, which was initiated in December 2021, and the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA) to "promote the use of low-carbon, made in America construction materials" through Executive Order 14057. "Buy Clean" is a form of environmentally preferred purchasing policy that seeks to measure, rank and select products, starting with construction materials, by their "embodied carbon." Embodied carbon indicates a per-unit quantity of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) expressed as carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2e) used throughout the life cycle of construction materials and products, including extraction, transport and manufacturing of materials and products.
Executive branch and congressional focus on Buy Clean policies were expressed in the IRA, such as in Sections 60503 and 60506, wherein the U.S. Department of Transportation's Federal Highway Administration was appropriated $2 billion and the General Services Administration was appropriated $2.15 billion to spend on materials and products "that have substantially lower levels of embodied greenhouse-gas emissions associated with all relevant stages of production, use and disposal as compared to estimated industry averages of similar materials or products, as determined by the Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency."
Though construction materials and products are critical to maintaining and improving the nation's infrastructure, the production of construction materials and products accounts for about 15 percent of annual global GHG emissions. Accordingly, the IRA funded EPA to support Buy Clean implementation in Section 60112 (an Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) Assistance program) and Section 60116, which provided EPA $100 million to identify and label construction materials and products that have substantially lower levels of embodied GHG emissions.
The Implementation Approach is being executed under Section 60116 of the IRA, with funds available through the end of Fiscal Year 2026. More information can be found on EPA's Low Embodied Carbon Construction Materials Program website.
Label Program Outline
An increasing number of U.S. federal, state and local government procurement policies, as well as other large institutional procurement policies, require manufacturers to disclose the embodied carbon of the materials and products that they produce in order to be eligible for procurement or procurement preferences. The Label Program develops the process that manufacturers of construction products can use to satisfy this requirement.
EPA has declared that the label program will initially focus on asphalt, concrete, glass and steel with lower embodied GHG emissions from the production stage (i.e., raw material extraction, transportation, manufacturing). These materials were preliminarily chosen based on their typically high embodied carbon levels, the availability of data and reporting frameworks (such as EPDs), and the fact that they represent the vast majority of construction materials and products purchased with federal funds. EPA indicated that it is creating a process for additional materials to develop robust data and reporting practices for future inclusion, and other materials such as wood products, insulation, aluminum, gypsum and roofing materials may follow in the coming years.
This process is defined in three phases for each material to move through:
- Phase I: Data Quality Improvement. This involves standardizing and improving the quality of data used to calculate the embodied carbon associated with construction materials and report this information to the market via EPDs.
- Phase II: Threshold Setting. This encompasses determining embodied carbon thresholds that product types need to meet to be labeled under this program, based on robust EPDs and other credible and representative industry benchmarks and data.
- Phase III: Labeling Materials and Products. This involves labeling construction materials and products that meet thresholds set by EPA.
Through this structure, the Label Program seeks to achieve four overarching goals:
- Facilitate federal procurement of substantially lower embodied carbon construction materials and products.
- Identify early adopters and market movers.
- Unify the market (standardize market signals).
- Complement whole-project sustainability approaches.
Who Is Impacted
The label program will impact those in the building and construction sector, including contractors and specifiers, as well as federal, state and local entities, manufacturers of construction materials, architects, engineers and procurement professionals.
Implementation Approach Timeline
EPA estimates moving through all three phases will take a new material 18 to 48 months.
In Phase 1, for a material to be included in the label program, it will be required to have a published North American Product Category Rule (PCR) under ISO 21930:2017. EPA will assess these PCRs against EPA's PCR Criteria. Additionally, there must be robust publicly available benchmark data and a "representative" number of publicly available EPDs for products in the category.
Once a material category has a PCR that meets EPA's PCR criteria, the next step (Phase II) is for EPA to develop thresholds for the product type, including through publishing draft thresholds for comment.
Product labeling occurs only in Phase 3. EPA is establishing enabling contracts and entities such as standard "Manufacturer Partner Agreements" and Conformity Assessment Bodies (CABs) to evaluate EPDs against the eligibility criteria. In Phase 3, products may take six to 12 months to undergo review and be made available in the labeling system.
Please note that companies purchasing low-carbon materials and seeking to make statements regarding reductions in GHG emissions, such as through the use of green building materials, should evaluate state anti-greenwashing laws. Some states, such as California, require explanation and specific evidence before making such claims.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.