EPA Offers $100 Million in Grants to Manufacturers of Clean Construction Materials

the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced the availability of $100 million in grants to support efforts to report and reduce climate pollution linked to the manufacturing of construction materials and products, which account for 11% of annual global greenhouse gas emissions. The funding through EPA’s new Reducing Embodied Greenhouse Gas Emissions for Construction Materials program will help manufacturers disclose environmental impacts across the life of a product and inform institutional purchasers who are prioritizing lower embodied carbon construction materials. Thanks to President Biden's Investing in America agenda, a key pillar of Bidenomics, the new program—created by the Inflation Reduction Act—supports the resurgence of sustainable American manufacturing.

“In order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in construction materials and products, we must be able track and understand where they are,” said Assistant Administrator for the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention Michal Freedhoff. “These new grants through President Biden’s Investing in America agenda will help ensure manufacturers have access to the assistance they need to disclose and reduce emissions, thereby supporting thriving and healthy communities across America.”

“Today’s funding announcement from EPA is like the falling of small stones that starts an avalanche of industrial sector emissions reductions in the US,” said U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (NY). “By shining a light on leading low and no carbon products, providing direct incentives to deeply decarbonize industrial facilities, and creating a market for these products, the IRA is driving down emissions in one of the hardest to abate sectors while supporting US jobs and industry. It’s just the latest example of how the Inflation Reduction Act is reducing carbon emissions and helping us meet our climate goals while creating good paying jobs here in America.”

“As we work to rebuild our nation’s infrastructure, we should be using materials and products produced in the most sustainable way possible, which more often than not are American-made,” said US Senator Tom Carper (DE), chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. “Thanks to our investments in the Inflation Reduction Act, EPA is helping our nation’s companies to better understand and communicate the environmental impacts of their products. This will create new markets for American manufacturers making cleaner products and help reduce greenhouse gas emissions across our economy.”

This new grant program — Reducing Embodied Greenhouse Gas Emissions for Construction Materials and Products — will help businesses develop robust Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) which disclose environmental impacts across the life of a product. Embodied greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, also called embodied carbon, refers to the amount of GHG emissions associated with the extraction, production, transport, and manufacturing stages of a product's life. EPDs facilitate the reliable tracking of emissions associated with construction materials and products to inform procurement decisions.

EPA will provide grants to businesses that manufacture, remanufacture, and refurbish construction materials and products for developing and verifying EPDs, and to states, Tribes, and nonprofit organizations that will support such businesses. The EPDs generated through this grant program will make it easier for state and local governments—and other institutional buyers—to ensure the construction projects they fund are using low carbon construction materials.

EPA is working with other federal agencies as part of a broader initiative funded by the Inflation Reduction Act to address the embodied carbon of construction materials with the goal of substantially lowering the levels of embodied carbon and other GHG. The Inflation Reduction Act also appropriated 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. 

The deadline to apply to this grant competition is January 8, 2024. EPA requests the submittal of an optional Notice of Intent to apply by October 27, 2023, by sending an email to [email protected].

Eligible entities include:

EPA plans to award in fiscal year 2024 up to 40 grants and/or cooperative agreements, some which would enable funding and technical assistance to hundreds of small businesses via subaward programs established by selected eligible applicants.

Funding amounts for individual grant and cooperative agreements are anticipated to be in the range of $250,000 to $10 million. In addition, EPA will consider subranges of grants in the amounts of $250,000 to $749,999; $750,000 to $4.99 million; and $5 million to $10 million.