The Biden administration desires to search out extra sustainable development supplies

The Biden administration introduced $160 million in grants to tasks meant to measure the local weather affect of new-fangled development supplies. The grants cowl a spectrum of potential options from hemp-based merchandise to bamboo, recycled metal, and extra.

Scientists and startups have proposed all types of recent methods to chop down carbon dioxide emissions from constructing supplies which have develop into a giant local weather downside. However it’s exhausting to suss out how efficient proposed options are with out metrics in place to match merchandise. There’s additionally potential for greenwashing, when firms make sustainability claims that they will’t again up with proof.

That’s the place the Environmental Safety Company plans to step in with the funding allotted via the 2022 Inflation Discount Act. The $160 million will largely go towards serving to companies develop “high-quality environmental product declarations” (EPDs) that estimate the affect a product may have over its lifetime. The hope is that extra standardized reporting will enable climate-conscious patrons, together with the federal authorities, to match totally different merchandise and make extra knowledgeable purchases.

“This funding will create markets for American producers making cleaner supplies and assist firms higher perceive and talk the environmental impacts of their merchandise,” Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE) stated in a press launch Tuesday.

There are 38 grant recipients, together with particular person firms, universities, and commerce teams representing cement, glass, wooden, and different industries. The nonprofit Hemp Constructing Institute, as an illustration, was awarded practically $6.2 million to develop environmental assessments for supplies constructed from hemp, soy, and different crops. That features “hempcrete” constructed from hemp that may change conventional concrete and insulation. The Massachusetts Institute of Expertise (MIT) was awarded practically $1 million to place collectively an “tutorial hub” and annual workshops centered on reusing metal.

Building supplies are answerable for round 15 p.c of world greenhouse gasoline emissions. For comparability, that’s as a lot as 7 instances extra local weather air pollution than aviation produces annually. Air pollution from concrete and metal, specifically, is notoriously troublesome to get rid of. Concrete is essentially the most extensively used substance on the earth after water. Producing cement and metal additionally requires excessive temperatures sometimes reached by burning fossil fuels, whereas cement creates extra CO2 via a chemical response within the manufacturing course of. That makes it all of the extra essential to reuse supplies and discover options the place potential.