Federal Government Moves Toward Low Embodied Carbon Buildings

Earlier this year, the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) approved a series of procurement principles to drive federal action toward low embodied carbon building materials and approaches. The GSA’s vast procurement power gives it a unique ability to influence markets; over the past decade 253 million square feet of buildings were constructed for GSA, representing more than $11 billion in value.

1. A material approach for projects requiring environmental product declarations for 75% of materials used (by cost or weight) and that their emissions fall in the best-performing 80 percent of global warming potential among functionally equivalent products.
2. A whole building life cycle assessment approach for larger projects (over $3 million), requiring that buildings be designed in such a way that life-cycle carbon assessment shows that the selected design results in a 20 percent carbon reduction.

In 2001, the GSA adopted the LEED building rating system to meet its performance requirements for new construction. These low embodied carbon procurement principals are anticipated to follow a similar market adoption trajectory. Click here to view the full document.

For more information on how Build With Strength can help leverage low embodied carbon performance requirements to help place more concrete, contact Tien Peng at tpeng@nrmca.org or 206-913-8535.