Get Involved: EPA’s Low Embodied Carbon Construction Materials Program

Registration Information:

To register for this course - please reserve your seat for the "Building Materials Summit" located in the Greenbuild agenda.

Registering for the session holds your seat in the class until 5 minutes prior to the scheduled start time. At that time your seat in the session can no longer be guaranteed.

If a workshop or session is full, you will not be able to add it to your agenda; however, if you have the appropriate pass you will be able to enter the session on a first-come first-served basis 5 minutes prior to the scheduled start of the event so long as capacity has not been reached

Greenbuild staff at the entrance of the session have the ability to stop permitting entrance to the session when the room hits the set capacity.

Description:

This session will share the latest developments in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) efforts to improve data quality, provide EPD technical assistance and label products under the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA). IRA leverages federal procurement and funding of buildings and infrastructure to catalyze markets for American-made construction materials and products with lower embodied carbon. It provided EPA with $350 million dollars to 1) develop a program to support enhanced standardization, measurement, reporting and verification of embodied carbon of construction materials/products ($250M) and 2) develop and carry out a program to identify and label construction materials and products that have substantially lower levels of embodied greenhouse gas emissions ($100M).

In this session, EPA staff will describe efforts to improve data quality of EPDs, outline the approach being used to stand up the label program, and share the various ways that stakeholders are invited to engage and participate. The session will also provide information on new direct technical assistance from EPA, as well as technical assistance that will soon be available as a result of $160 million in EPA grants.

Session attendees will learn about current federal efforts advancing EPD data quality and transparency and will leave with resources and ideas for how they can take action to contribute towards the rapid decarbonization of building materials. Data quality improvements and the new label are especially relevant to Materials and Resources credits found in LEED v4 and v4.1 BD+C rating system, as well as product and material credits in O+M & ID+C rating system targeted at reducing the embodied carbon GHG impacts from the product and materials we use in construction.