Ginny Cleaveland, Deputy Press Secretary, Federal Communications, ginny.cleaveland@sierraclub.org, 415-508-8498 (Pacific Time)
WASHINGTON, DC — The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration today announced $2 billion in new grants, including $1.2 billion to fund state construction projects utilizing low-carbon materials like concrete (cement), glass, asphalt, and steel. The funding is part of the Low-Carbon Transportation Materials (LCTM) grant program through the Inflation Reduction Act’s Federal Buy Clean Initiative.
The funds are available to state departments of transportation through an application request that aims to allow the Federal Highway Administration to quickly reimburse states that want to immediately incorporate low-carbon materials into their construction projects.
The Federal Highway Administration also plans to make an additional $800 million available to non-state applicants — such as metropolitan planning organizations, local governments or agencies, federally recognized tribes, federal land management agencies, and others — in the coming months.
This purchasing program comes on the heels of last year’s pilot project led by the General Services Administration to increase demand for materials made with lower-carbon emissions for constructing and renovating public buildings. The Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Federal Emergency Management Agency are also expected to take similar steps with guidance from the Environmental Protection Agency.
In response to the announcement, Yong Kwon, a Senior Policy Analyst with the Sierra Club’s Industrial Decarbonization campaign, issued the following statement:
“This announcement sends an important signal to manufacturers of steel, cement, and other construction materials that the market will reward their efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We are encouraged by the growing capacity of federal and state agencies to collect and assess large amounts of data on the emissions footprint of these materials. We plan to watch closely to ensure that federal agencies continue to work together to create harmonized policies on the procurement of construction materials, which will help spur the manufacturing sector to reduce their emissions as quickly as possible.”
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