FACT SHEET: Biden-⁠Harris Administration Announces New Commitments to Bolster Innovative and Clean Construction Materials Across the United States

Leading U.S. companies and the public sector announce new actions to tackle the climate crisis, support American workers, and boost American manufacturing by harnessing federal and state purchasing power and private sector innovation and investment

President Biden and Vice President Harris have secured the largest-ever climate investment and unleashed a clean energy manufacturing boom that has attracted hundreds of billions of dollars in private sector investment, created hundreds of thousands of new clean energy jobs, and lowered energy costs for families while delivering cleaner air and water for communities across the country.

The production of construction materials is a major source of pollution; concrete and steel manufacturing alone generate over 15% of global emissions. In 2021, President Biden launched the Federal Buy Clean Initiative, which leverages the buying power of the federal government to catalyze markets for cleaner construction materials. To date, agencies across the federal government have deployed $4.5 billion from President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act to support the Initiative.

To continue to address this challenge and send a strong market signal, the Biden-Harris Administration collaborated with two nonprofit organizations—RMI and the Natural Resources Defense Council—to hold a series of regional convenings around the country. Resulting from these convenings, today, the Administration is announcing new public and private commitments to strengthen markets for cleaner construction materials. These new commitments will advance the Biden-Harris Administration’s efforts to make U.S. manufacturing the cleanest and most competitive in the world, boosting U.S. economic competitiveness and creating good-paying jobs.

State and local governments pledge to adopt cleaner construction materials in infrastructure projects:

The public sector is the largest buyer of U.S. construction materials, as it builds and maintains America’s infrastructure—including roads, bridges, dams, ports, courthouses, and more. In May 2023, the Biden-Harris Administration launched the Federal-State Buy Clean Partnership, which brings 13 states together with federal agencies to prioritize efforts that support the procurement cleaner construction materials. Today, New York State, New York City, the City of Los Angeles, Washington State, and Michigan are making new pledges to use lower-carbon materials in public infrastructure.

• New York State committed to reduce carbon emissions from concrete used in the state’s infrastructure projects by 30% by 2028. The commitment advances Governor Hochul’s Executive Order 22, which directed state agencies to reduce embodied carbon in construction materials used in the state’s infrastructure projects. 
• The City of Los Angeles committed to new 15% emissions reduction targets for construction materials in all of the city’s infrastructure projects and announced it will carry out five demonstration projects of ultra-low-carbon concrete solutions. 
• Washington State announced new details about its newly passed Buy Clean and Buy Fair legislation, outlining timelines and data requirements to incorporate embodied carbon into the state’s procurement decisions.
• The State of Michigan shared new partnerships between the Michigan Department of Transportation and local municipalities to support the adoption of cleaner construction materials in state and local transportation and infrastructure projects.
• New York City directed city agencies to begin requiring environmental product declarations for various concrete and steel products, advancing the City’s Executive Order 23 on Clean Construction, signed in 2022.

Companies are announcing commitments that build on the Federal Buy Clean Initiative to support strong, durable markets for cleaner construction materials:

The Department of Energy’s Industrial Demonstrations Program—funded by the Biden-Harris Administration’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act—is supporting the advancement of transformational technologies necessary to decarbonize the industrial sector. Start-up companies and incumbents have responded to the Demonstration Program and other incentives to pioneer new formulations and new ways of manufacturing cement that can dramatically reduce emissions and improve the performance of buildings, with better durability, aesthetics, or cost.

• Heidelberg Materials North America, one of the largest concrete, cement, and aggregate producers, pledged that by 2030 it would reduce company-wide emissions by 25% and reduce emissions from a single U.S.-based plant by more than 50% from 2020 levels, and announced that it will carry out a suite of commercial-scale decarbonization demonstration projects using ultra-low-carbon concrete solutions.
• Cemex, a leading producer of cement and concrete in the United States, pledged to supply concrete with a reduction in global warming potential of at least 40% for a suite of innovative demonstration projects.
• National Ready Mixed Concrete Company, one of Southern California’s largest ready-mixed concrete companies, committed to piloting five innovative demonstration projects of near-zero emissions concrete by 2027. The company also announced the first placement of limestone calcined clay cement in California, which represents a major opportunity to slash emissions by 40-50% using a new market-ready technology.
• Ozinga, one of the largest suppliers of ready-mixed concrete in the Midwest, committed to leading demonstration projects of cleaner concrete, including at least five demonstrations of concrete with 50% lower emissions.
• Sublime Systems, an innovative low-carbon cement producer, announced that it had received $75 million in funding for its first commercial facility, as well as a pre-paid reservation for the cement produced at that plant, which will ensure deployment of its product once it starts full-scale production
• Emerging concrete and cement technology startups made pledges to help users adopt cleaner concrete solutions. C-Crete, Pozzotive, and Sublime Systems each pledged to conduct five demonstration projects using materials with 50% reductions in emissions and to share performance results, while Queens Carbon committed to new transparency and data disclosure standards. 

Major technology companies committed to piloting cutting edge technologies:

Data center construction requires large amounts of concrete, and major technology companies are working together to identify new approaches for building these facilities with much lower environmental impacts.

• Microsoft’s Climate Innovation Fund announced new agreements to expand the supply and demand for cleaner steel and concrete. This includes investments in steel suppliers Stegra and Boston Metal and concrete suppliers CarbonCure and Prometheus Materials, as well as a memorandum of understanding to negotiate a contract for environmental attribute certificates with Sublime Systems.
• Amazon Web Services (AWS) is working with Summit Materials to scale up the most promising concrete decarbonization solutions, including material vendors who can provide lower-emission calcined clays across their supply chain. In 2023, AWS built 36 data centers with lower-carbon concrete, an increase from 16 in 2022. 
• The Open Compute Project Foundation, in collaboration with four of the country’s largest builders of data centers—AWS, Google, Meta, and Microsoft—completed a first-of-its-kind demonstration project to test four ultra-low carbon concrete solutions, with 30-50% lower emissions. The Foundation has committed to publishing the results of the project to spur further research and development.

Real estate firms committed to using cleaner materials in their buildings:

While public sector investments account for approximately half of U.S. cement and concrete purchases, the private sector drives the vertical construction market, including high-rises, office buildings, and skyscrapers. Many companies are stepping up to the challenge of understanding how new ways of building and new materials can be integrated into their businesses. 

• BXP (Boston Properties), the largest publicly traded real estate developer in the country, pledged by December 2025 it would purchase concrete with 15% lower emissions.
• Clark Pacific, a leading U.S. manufacturer of prefabricated building systems, pledged to achieve five demonstration projects that will reduce cement use by 25% relative to the Marin County and Santa Monica low carbon concrete code limits for precast.
• Turner Construction Company, the largest general builder in the country, will by 2026 implement at least five demonstration projects using concrete with 50% lower emissions. Beginning next year, Turner will track embodied carbon and require environmental product declarations for projects representing a majority of its annual revenues.
• Weldon Development Group, a Midwest-based real estate developer, set requirements to use concrete that is at least 15% cleaner by 2025, and pledged to adopt environmental product declaration reporting standards across its project portfolio.

Note: The efforts by both public and private-sector partners to deploy innovative materials are reported in terms of emissions reductions relative to 2022 National Ready Mix Concrete Association regional benchmarks, which are commonly used as an industry baseline for measuring concrete emissions.

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