In an ongoing effort to increase the use of what are generally defined as clean construction materials, the Federal Highway Administration has announced its approval of more than $1.2 billion in grants to 39 states.
The funding is part of the Low Carbon Transportation Materials Discretionary Grant Program which is designed to encourage and support the use of low carbon construction materials in road construction projects.
Such materials, by FHWA definition, release minimal gas emissions in their processing and manufacture.
Those materials include specially designed and manufactured steel, glass, and asphalt. In a statement, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said the FHWA was “taking important steps to mitigate the impact of climate change by using low-carbon materials to build and rebuild our transportation system.”
According to the FHWA, construction materials have traditionally produced “significant embodied carbon emissions due to the energy-intensive processes used to extract, process, transport between supply chain locations, and manufacture those products.”
Buttigieg added that with the new grant funding, “dozens of states will have the resources to invest in cleaner materials and reduce carbon emissions while moving forward with projects that create jobs and support American manufacturing.”
The new funding is seeing $27 million going to the Arizona Department of Transportation; just under $32 million for the Colorado Department of Transportation; and $29.8 million for the New Mexico Department of Transportation.
All of the grants to the states range between $14 million and nearly $32 million.
The Low Carbon Transportation Materials grant program is funded via the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act and also targets projects undertaken by local government agencies, metropolitan planning groups, and Tribal governments. The program is additionally tied in with the Federal Buy Clean Initiative, which was launched in 2021 and is designed to leverage the federal government’s buying power in the purchase of clean construction materials not just in highway projects, but also federal building projects.
December 3, 2024
By Garry Boulard
