(AGENPARL) – mar 16 luglio 2024 Issued: Jul 16, 2024 (3:59pm EDT)
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Biden-Harris Administration announces over $18 million to support clean U.S.
manufacturing of construction materials across New England
Grants from President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act will support the
renewal of American manufacturing by helping businesses produce low-carbon
materials
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, 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. 
Learn more about EPA’s Grant Program for Reducing Embodied Greenhouse Gases
in Construction Materials and Products. 
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