Washington, D.C.—Tile Council of North America (TCNA) has been selected by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to receive $2.2 million in grant funding to reduce embodied carbon emissions in construction materials and products. In support of the Inflation Reduction Act, the goal of this grant program is to assist businesses that manufacture construction materials and products to develop and verify Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs), as well as support businesses, universities and nonprofit organizations that facilitate these efforts.
Public building service commissioner Elliot Doomes and EPA’s deputy assistant administrator for pollution prevention—Jennie R. Romer, Esq.—recognized TCNA as a selectee for the funding at the inaugural Flooring Sustainability Summit here last month. “We’ve set a goal of reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2030 and achieving a net zero emissions economy by 2050,” said Romer. “To achieve those goals, we’ll need to reduce embodied carbon emissions from the infrastructure sector.”
The EPA program seeks to improve transparency and disclosure of embodied carbon emissions data associated with construction materials and products to facilitate the procurement of lower embodied carbon construction materials throughout the U.S.
TCNA is one of 38 organizations selected to receive a total of $160 million. TCNA’s project is set to expand the number of available industry-wide and product-specific EPDs for ceramic tile and related installation materials, improve PCRs to better differentiate between different types of ceramic tile and develop a tile industry-specific software program that will streamline valid EPD delivery.
“Ceramic tile is among the top 15 common building materials in cradle-to-gate embodied carbon emissions in federal building projects,” said Bill Griese, TCNA deputy executive director. “We’re eager to leverage our leadership role in the ceramic tile industry to advance the work of EPD development and provide data well-beyond the gate so that full lifecycle embodied carbon factors can more readily be taken into consideration. Our project is of paramount importance to government procurement officials as they increase the quantity, robustness and organization of EPD data, thus facilitating optimized selection of low-embodied carbon ceramic tile products.”