States get $1.2B to build roads, highways with low-carbon materials

Nearly 72 million people likely traveled by car over Thanksgiving last week in the United States, setting a record for the holiday travel period. Vehicles crisscrossed the nation’s roads, highways, bridges, and tunnels — infrastructure that, for the most part, was built using carbon-intensive materials.

A new federal initiative aims to curb the planet-warming emissions that come from constructing road transportation projects going forward.

In November, the Biden administration said it awarded $1.2 billion in grants to accelerate the use of cleaner asphalt, concrete, glass, and steel. Transportation agencies in 37 states and in Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico are set to receive between $14 million and $31.9 million each to help them study, track, and ultimately buy low-carbon materials.

Whether the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) can implement the program as planned is an open question in the run-up to the second Trump administration.

President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to claw back funding provided under the Inflation Reduction Act — the landmark U.S. climate law that offers hundreds of billions of dollars for carbon-cutting initiatives, including the new transportation grants. A few steps still need to happen before FHWA actually gives states the money, and any funding stuck in limbo come January 20 will likely be vulnerable, experts say.

Despite the uncertainty, state agencies and climate groups expressed enthusiasm for the initiative, saying it could not only slash emissions but also boost America’s production of key commodities. About a quarter of cement sold in the U.S. every year comes from overseas suppliers, representing an opportunity to replace high-carbon imports with cleaner homemade goods.

“It really shows that states with large [transportation] markets are angling to buy more clean construction materials, which is a very important demand signal for companies looking to produce those clean materials,” said Ash Lauth, a senior campaign strategist in the global cement initiative at Industrious Labs, an advocacy group.

Boosting states’ demand — and industry’s supply 

Globally, the production of steel and cement — the key ingredient in concrete — together generates around 15 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions every year. Startups and manufacturing giants alike are developing new formulations and techniques that result in less CO₂ being emitted during the manufacturing process. Yet companies are struggling to scale up production and lower costs enough to fully transform these staid, centuries-old industries.

“We need government support to accelerate that pace of change” in the construction sector, said Eoin Condren, director of corporate development for Ecocem Global.

The Irish company says it developed technology that sharply reduces the need for carbon-intensive clinker — the precursor material for cement — by using other common minerals and chemicals in unconventional ways. Ecocem claims its process can reduce CO₂ emissions by 70 percent compared with the average European cement blend. The company is working to build its first U.S. cement plant in California in the coming years — a state that could receive nearly $32 million through the FHWA program.

The federal grants won’t directly fund companies that make things like alternative cement or near-zero-emissions steel — though separate programs from the U.S. Department of Energy are meant to do just that. Instead, the idea is to help state transportation agencies serve as crucial early customers, giving producers the demand they need to invest in new facilities or adopt cleaner techniques.

It’s all part of the Biden administration’s larger Buy Clean strategy, which aims to harness the government’s massive purchasing power to jumpstart the U.S. market for low-carbon materials. State and local governments spend around $100 billion a year on road work alone, and they’re often the biggest clients for companies that make construction products.

Yong Kwon, a senior campaign adviser on Sierra Club’s industrial transformation team, acknowledged that the grants amount to ​“a drop in the bucket.” Take Wisconsin, which is set to receive a grant of nearly $32 million. Its 2023-2025 transportation budget provides $4.15 billion for rehabilitating existing highways and building new ones.

Still, Kwon said the federal awards could help to lay the foundation for statewide Buy Clean efforts in a few important ways.

Public agencies need to start compiling emissions and environmental data on the companies and facilities that provide construction materials. States also need to work closely with contractors and local companies to share information on carbon-cutting and novel technologies — something that, say, a mom-and-pop concrete supplier might not be readily familiar with or know how to adopt.

Such steps allow agencies to eventually set mandates or establish maximum emissions limits for cement, steel, or glass purchased for public works projects. To that end, the federal grants can also be used to reimburse agencies or provide incentives for buying road materials with ​“substantially lower levels” of embodied carbon emissions compared to estimated industry averages, according to FHWA.

“For the states that are receiving this extra funding, it’s not like they’re unaware of the climate impact” of materials, Kwon said. ​“The big opportunity here is to empower those agencies that want to do more, but have not received the adequate state funding…to really get a bite out of this apple.” It might also push states to ​“think holistically” and scrutinize whether things like highway expansions or parking lots are truly necessary given the associated emissions, he added.

For its part, Wisconsin’s Department of Transportation (WisDOT) says it plans to use its FHWA grant to launch a pilot program for measuring and tracking the carbon footprint of its transportation projects. The agency will also set sustainability benchmarks for highway construction contracts that involve concrete and asphalt.

“This will allow us to increase the use of low-carbon materials and improve the sustainability of our transportation system without sacrificing performance,” WisDOT Secretary Kristina Boardman said in a press release.

Arizona’s Department of Transportation (ADOT) is set to get $27 million to develop a research program with industry leaders and academic partners that includes deploying cleaner concrete and asphalt mixes. The agency will also establish a technology platform for environmental product declarations — akin to a climate ​“nutrition label” for individual products — that contractors can access.

Doug Nintzel, a spokesman for ADOT, said the initial steps will allow the agency to identify candidate projects for using low-carbon materials, and it’ll work with pavement plant operators and contractors to analyze the pollution reduction, energy efficiency, and quality-of-life benefits related to those projects. ADOT operates an $8 billion, five-year construction program for improvement and expansion projects across nearly 7,000 miles of state highways.

This type of work ​“wouldn’t have happened without the grant,” he said by email.

If these efforts continue during the next Trump administration, the timing would work out well for companies that are striving to bring new facilities online, such as Ecocem. The grants could also dovetail with other federal efforts like the Department of Energy’s Industrial Demonstrations Program — an initiative that, like the FHWA grants, is at risk of being cut back under Trump.

The $6 billion demonstration program, which is funded by the Inflation Reduction Act and bipartisan infrastructure law, aims to transform the nation’s heavy industrial sectors. Earlier this year, six cement projects were selected to receive up to $1.5 billion in awards to demonstrate everything from carbon capture systems to alternative cement chemistries.

Sublime Systems, for example, is slated to get nearly $87 million to build its first commercial-scale plant in Holyoke, Massachusetts. The MIT spinout has developed an electrochemical process for making cement in a way that doesn’t emit carbon or require scorching-hot kilns. Last month, Sublime advanced to phase one of its project, receiving $12.8 million of its federal award for initial project planning in the state — which, as it happens, is up for a nearly $32 million FHWA grant.

Kwon said that, ideally, federally backed projects like Sublime’s will be churning out innovative materials by the time that state transportation agencies are ready to buy more of it, so that public investments can boost both supply and demand in ways that enable the private market to take off.

“It’s building toward a very bright future — if the programs hold,” he said.