Using sustainable building materials can be difficult when the environmental impact of most construction products is unknown. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) aims to address that issue with the help of university and business partners, including those in Missouri.
Both the University of Missouri, and the construction material manufacturer Holcim — which has a plant in Ste. Genevieve — were awarded federal grants to develop Environmental Product Declarations, or EPDs, for different types of cement, concrete, and asphalt.
EPDs are like an environmental nutrition label for a building material. They include an assessment and score of a product based on the carbon emissions associated with extracting, manufacturing, and transporting the material.
“They will assess the carbon footprint of that material from the amount of energy required to manufacture that material, the environmental impact of extracting that material, and then the fuel used to deliver that material to market or to the job site,” said Jill Benoit, a senior manager at Holcim who coordinates the company’s decarbonization efforts.
Holcim is receiving $1.3 million from the EPA to develop environmental assessments for cement, asphalt and ultra-high-performance concrete which is a steel fiber-based cement. The federal government estimates construction materials used in buildings and infrastructure account for more than15% of annual global greenhouse gas emissions.
Holcim has operations in 43 states and is the largest cement manufacturer in the U.S. The largest cement plant in the country is the Holcim site in Ste. Genevieve, Missouri. One in five building projects in the nation uses cement made in Missouri, according to the company.
“We commend Holcim for their work in advancing sustainable practices to reduce carbon emissions here in the Heartland and across our nation,” said EPA Region 7 Administrator Meg McCollister in a news release. “Their innovative approach, supported by this grant, advances climate-friendly practices and sustainability in one of our nation’s most important industries.”
The Holcim and University of Missouri grants are two of 38 such initiatives totaling $160 million funded by the Biden administration's Inflation Reduction Act. The EPA grants aim to drive market demand for lower carbon construction materials and ensure that buyers — including local governments — have clearer choices in sourcing sustainable materials.
Holcim began developing EPDs in 2021, Benoit said, and the grant will also make updating the assessments quicker.
“Whenever we use alternative energy sources or increase process efficiencies through equipment upgrades or do a clinker factor reduction project. Now we can measure those reductions in environmental emissions from those new projects or innovations in minutes rather than months,” Benoit said.
According to Holcim's website, the Ste. Genevieve cement plant spans 4,000 acres and employs 250 people. Previous energy efficiency efforts at the site lowered carbon emissions of the cement manufactured there by 10-15%, according to the company.
Building and infrastructure projects can’t lower their emissions if the products they’re using aren’t thoroughly measured first, Benoit said, adding that more federal and state construction projects are requiring EPDs, driving demand for the industry to adopt them. But she said there is still a long way to go.
“In some states across the country they're not even being requested at all,” she said. “So this EPA funding opportunity is really going to make great strides in the advancement of EPDs.”
Rubber in the road
Using recycled materials is key to increasing the sustainability of asphalt and concrete. The University of Missouri is a partner in a $3 million grant initiative to develop EPDs for rubber modified asphalt mixes — pavement materials that use recycled scrap tires.
Punya Rath is a professor of civil engineering at MU and said the work in sustainable infrastructure materials has “picked up steam” in the last few years.
“In fact, we have been not walking but rather running towards sustainability,” he said.
Rath and his fellow researchers have conducted a number of “demonstration projects” _ including on Stadium Boulevard in Columbia — to test the performance of rubber modified asphalt.
“There's been a lot of attention on enhancing the sustainability of our road infrastructure and one of the ways to do that is to make sure that our material production is as clean as possible,” said Rath. “You can't ensure that your material production is clean until you quantify it.”
EPDs include environmental assessments of about a dozen characteristics of a product, including the emissions produced when a material is created, how the plant it's manufactured in is powered, and how far it is shipped.
Rath said that a material’s characteristics and production process are like knobs that can be turned up or down to impact the EPD score. But, he added, lower emissions cannot come at the cost of performance. Roads and buildings must be durable and safe.
“We want to build the most sustainable roads. We want to build the most resilient roads. We want to increase our use of recycled materials, but we don't want to do it at the cost of something,” said Rath.
“The more data we can collect, the better informed our decisions will be,” he said.
