The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 provided funding to the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and the General Services Administration (GSA) to assist these agencies with procuring low carbon construction materials. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has defined low carbon as meaning a global-warming potential that is in the best performing 20th percentile, 40th percentile or below the regional average, depending on material availability, when compared to similar materials/products (see EPA’s Interim Determination for more information).
Since 2014, NRMCA has published average environmental impacts for concrete in the regional benchmarking report, but had not reported the statistical quintiles. Recently, NRMCA worked with WAP Sustainability to determine these statistical quintiles for the data included in the 2021 Industry-Wide EPD and Benchmark Report.
NRMCA has submitted the statistical addendum to the FHWA so that state Departments of Transportation (DOTs) can assess concrete mixtures in their conformance with the EPA interim determination. The report is published on the NRMCA Environmental Product Declarations (EPD) website and it's expected that FHWA will post the benchmarks on its Low Carbon Transportation Materials (LCTM) website once grants are announced. While this takes place, NRMCA is also assisting with the development of an updated concrete Product Category Rule (PCR) which will lead to a revision of the Industry-Wide Environmental Product Declaration (IW EPD) and Regional Benchmark Report using the new PCR and more recent concrete mixture data. NRMCA expects the updated PCR to be published in February 2025 and anticipates the benchmarks will be updated in late Spring 2025. Those updates will be submitted to FHWA as a revision to the current benchmarks.
For more information of the FHWA or GSA low carbon construction materials programs or the statistical addendum to NRMCA’s regional benchmark report, contact NRMCA Executive Vice President, Local Paving, at bkillingsworth@nrmca.org.
National Ready Mixed Concrete Association