EPA grants: Here’s who gets what
This week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced nearly $160 million worth of grants for manufacturing-minded entities across the country. Part of the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act, the grants are “to support efforts to report and reduce climate pollution from the manufacturing of construction materials and products.” Another stated aim of the funding is to “support businesses that manufacture construction materials and products to develop and verify environmental product declarations (EPDs),” which help companies quantify and disclose the environmental impact and life cycle of their products.
The move highlights a broader push within U.S. manufacturing and building suppliers to use more climate-friendly, eco-conscious materials. As the grant summaries show, there’s also heavy investment in tech-based tools to increase environmental accountability.
The grantees include:
American Wood Council
Selected Funding Amount: $6,000,000
The American Wood Council (AWC) is a nonprofit organization committed to ensuring a resilient, safe and sustainable built environment.
AWC’s project will expand the amount of data and enhance transparency about U.S. wood products. The project will seek to advance EPDs for wood products by improving primary life cycle data collection and reporting, updating PCRs, conducting a gap analysis, creating an EPD generator tool, improving disclosures for wood in Whole Building Life Cycle Assessments, and administering pass-through grants to U.S. wood product manufacturers to create EPDs. AWC estimates that at least 2,000 U.S. wood products mills, and 15,000 architecture, engineering, and construction professionals will be reached through the project.
Atlas Roofing Corporation (18 states/Georgia)
Selected Funding Amount: $733,940
Atlas Roofing Corporation is a provider of asphalt shingles, roof underlayments, rigid expanded polystyrene and polyiso insulation, geofoam, cold chain, protective packaging, lost foam, and coated and paper facers and underlayments.
Atlas Roofing Corporation’s project will develop detailed LCAs and verified EPDs for the products it manufactures. The company will also develop a life cycle inventory of glass facer products used in the production of insulation and roofing materials to advance industry-wide transparency. By providing precise impact data associated with different products, Atlas Roofing Corporation will empower building designers to select less “impactful” materials and contribute to a more accurate understanding of the nuances of sustainability considerations across the roofing industry
Global Bamboo Technologies, Inc. (Ocala, Fla./National)
Selected Funding Amount: $282,768
BamCore is a building components manufacturer specializing in the use of structural biogenic fibers to help drive decarbonization of the built environment.
BamCore’s project will develop an industry-consensus approach for how to dynamically calculate biogenic carbon in EPDs as input into the American Center for Life Cycle Assessment’s (ACLCA’s) PCR Open Standard. As a proof of concept, the project team intends to create prototype PCRs and EPDs that conform to this new standard. The goal of the project is to increase standardization of all EPDs that leverage biogenic materials.
The project will also enhance the accuracy of environmental claims associated with biogenic materials and empower decision makers to make more informed choices, thus spurring market demand for low embodied carbon products.
Hemp Building Institute (Maryland, Tennessee, California and Alabama)
Selected Funding Amount: $6,186,200
Hemp Building Institute (HBI) is a nonprofit organization that provides support for entities that manufacture, remanufacture and refurbish construction materials and products. Biogenic materials from agricultural crops such as hemp, soy, and straw bale provide a unique opportunity to directly address climate change and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the built environment.
The Biogenic Building Materials project will focus on developing EPDs and LCAs for biogenic materials. This project will create a standardized cradle-to-gate PCR for agricultural crop components that will be combined with gate-to-grave, industry-determined PCRs to create a practical EPD generator tool for biogenic building materials.
The overall goal of the project is to assemble the assessments, protocols, tools and training in an ecosystem designed to increase adoption of biogenic building materials from agricultural crops.
Knauf Insulation, Inc. (Alabama, California, Indiana, Michigan, Texas and West Virginia)
Selected Funding Amount: $3,283,879
Knauf Insulation, Inc. is a building materials company that manufactures fiberglass insulation, delivering thermal and acoustical solutions for residential, commercial, industrial and OEM applications.
Knauf’s project will aim to improve the quantity, quality and robustness of data used to develop EPDs, exemplify best practices as related to data disclosure and verification, and spur market demand for low embodied carbon construction products.
The project proposes using technical expertise and assistance to enable contractors to perform LCA assessments for EPD development and verification, with a goal of developing EPDs for 100% of Knauf's product portfolio, including new and optimized versions of current EPDs. In addition, Knauf will produce a best practice manual on EPD development for industry-wide stakeholders and provide educational seminars to employees at Knauf manufacturing facilities on greenhouse gas reductions.
Oldcastle Infrastructure, Inc. (42 states)
Selected Funding Amount: $4,000,000
Oldcastle Infrastructure, Inc.’s project will focus on developing and publishing 15,405 facility-specific EPDs for asphalt, aggregates, ready-mix concrete, precast concrete, dry mix cement, masonry products and hardscape products, as well as developing a workforce training program focused on EPD education and data collection.
By disclosing and verifying this data through robust EPDs, Oldcastle will spur and meet market demand for low-carbon construction products. The comprehensive program, involving three CRH Americas business units, will utilize technical experts and consultants to ensure the EPD methods align with EPA criteria, thereby supporting sustainable procurement decisions and reducing embodied carbon in building materials.
Pioneer Millworks (New York and Oregon/National)
Selected Funding Amount: $302,300
Pioneer Millworks plans to develop EPDs for reclaimed and sustainably harvested wood flooring and paneling manufactured in the U.S. and to quantify their environmental advantages over existing EPDs.
This initiative seeks to establish the environmental and marketing benefits of using more sustainable content and minimizing unhealthy chemicals in wood products. This project will involve hiring a Sustainability Manager and collaborating with an LCA/EPD consultant to develop, verify and publish the EPDs. The education component includes webinars, presentations and articles to disseminate the knowledge gained, with the goal of helping other small firms benefit from this endeavor and drive industry-wide adoption of more robust EPDs.
Click here for the full list of grant recipients, along with detailed project descriptions.
