US General Services Administration to spend US$2bn on low-carbon building materials

The US General Services Administration (GSA) plans to spend US$2bn from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) to purchase cement and other building materials with substantially lower embodied carbon emissions, according to the Sierra Club. The building materials will be used to build and retrofit hundreds of government facilities in 150 projects across 39 states, Washington DC and Puerto Rico.

The step follows the success and lessons learned from 11 pilot projects announced in May 2023.

The Buy Clean public procurement plan is expected to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 41,000t and support 6000 jobs annually. In addition, it will reward producers that are investing in decarbonisation and encourages industry to apply for Department of Energy grants for adopting emerging technologies and more fastidiously labelling emissions from their facilities.

In response to the announcement the US Deputy Legislative Director for Industrial Policy and Trade, Harry Main, issued the following statement:“As the European Union and private companies demand cleaner materials, it is essential for American heavy industry to become more competitive globally. Thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act and this new plan from GSA, American manufacturers have access to billions of dollars in incentives to decarbonise. By tapping into these sources of funding, manufacturers of heavy industrial goods like steel and cement can make money through government procurement, invest in green capital upgrades, capture a growing share of the domestic market, and go on to export clean industrial goods globally.

We look forward to GSA purchasing materials from the best performers to encourage US manufacturers to innovate and become as competitive as possible. We call on lawmakers to defend GSA’s plan to outfit American projects with clean American materials, and on domestic industry to embrace investments toward a clean competitive advantage that is key to their bottom line and to keeping good manufacturing jobs in the US.”

The Sierra Club recently published a report, “Coming Clean on Industrial Emissions”, alongside a database and interactive map, that reveals for the first time the greenhouse gas emissions intensity at every domestic facility in the US for the cement, steel, aluminium and metallurgical coke industries, underlining the importance of federal investments in these critical sectors to the US economy that will both reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase employment.