Clean Concrete Pledge Initiative

On August 7, RMI and NRDC, in partnership with the White House Council on Environmental Quality and White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, hosted concrete industry stakeholders from across the Midwest to discuss strategies to decarbonize this key building material.

This convening underscored federal and local efforts to reduce embodied carbon in construction, facilitated through initiatives like the Federal Buy Clean program and the Inflation Reduction Act.

The event featured pledges by Heidelberg Materials, one of the world’s largest building materials companies, to reduce the climate impact of concrete. Participants learned from local industry experts on the current state of low-concrete adoption in the Midwest region through case studies such as the Salesforce Tower in Chicago (Wolf Point South) developed by Hines Development.

On August 8, attendees were invited to visit green concrete trial demonstrations organized by the Open Compute Project Foundation, featuring industry leaders such as Meta, Microsoft, AWS, and Google. Wiss, Janney, Elstner hosted the tour at their lab facility near Chicago and showcased the performance results of four innovative low-carbon concrete mixes tested for use in data center slabs.

This site visit provided an opportunity for idea exchange between the public and private sector. Public sector representatives from multiple Midwestern states, along with federal officials from the White House, EPA, and DOE, learned how to apply and test innovative low-carbon concrete mixes.

Application of emerging low-carbon concrete materials requires capacity building with engineers, ready-mixed suppliers, and contractors.

A consistent testing, validation, and data-sharing process for emerging low-carbon concrete mixes will build industry confidence in novel mixes.

On October 2, the Eastern US convening brought together concrete industry stakeholders from across the Northeast in Boston. The final event in the series featured clean concrete procurement announcements from public and private sector partners, such as BXP Inc. (Boston Properties) and New York State. In addition, emerging technology vendors such as Sublime Systems, Pozzotive, C-Crete Technologies, and Queens Carbon made pledges to pursue demonstration projects and data transparency.

The Boston event featured extensive break-out discussions on policy visioning and workforce development. Attendees brainstormed ideal policies needed to achieve market transformation, while facing the real-world challenges of building a workforce to implement them.

On October 1, leaders from Sublime Systems, WS Development, and RMI, along with government officials, gathered in Boston to celebrate the opening of New England’s largest net-zero carbon office building. This event highlighted the first commercial application of Sublime Cement™, a low-carbon cement innovation used within the building’s primary public space, the Paseo. The ceremony included announcements on groundbreaking partnerships aimed at expanding clean concrete availability across New England. This event emphasized the role of innovative building materials in the transition toward a net-zero future and showcased the opportunity of public/private partnership to unlock transformational change.

Codes and standards are important regulatory drivers of demand for clean concrete.

Public and private investments in clean concrete products can spur economic development and industrial growth.