Early in his administration, President Biden launched the Federal Buy Clean Initiative to harness the nation’s purchasing power – more than $630 billion annually – while simultaneously investing in the country’s infrastructure. The initiative and the Buy Clean Task Force promote the use of low carbon, made in America construction materials.
“We are in the midst of a manufacturing boom here in America, and the Biden administration has made building the energy transition with American materials a top priority of that transition,” said John McAuliff, senior policy advisor for the Office of Clean Energy Innovation & Implementation at the White House, in his opening remarks at ACMA’s Composites Sustainability Today event in June. “The work you do this week and into the future will make a difference for your customers and our country.”
Composites Sustainability Today provided insight on how companies – and the composites industry as a whole – can embrace the sustainability movement. The infrastructure and construction markets are front and center in this movement. The Inflation Reduction Act has six sections that address embodied carbon of construction materials, including:
- $100 million for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to develop its Label Program for Low Embodied Carbon Construction Materials.
- $250 million to the EPA to create environmental product declarations (EPDs).
- $2 billion to the Department of Transportation (DOT) and Federal Highway. Administration (FHWA) to reimburse and incentivize recipients for the use of construction materials and products with substantially lower embodied carbon.
“The sustainability movement is real and it’s significant,” says Gregory Nadeau, a former DOT/FHWA administrator and publisher of the InfraTalk America multimedia platform. “Now is the time. We can’t continue to build infrastructure the way we have been when the opportunity to utilize new-age technology that has been proven and tested is available to us.”
Making a Case for Composite Solutions
FRP is poised to help transform infrastructure and construction projects. ACMA and IACMI – The Composites Institute developed the CIRCLE Program to help composites manufacturers assess and reduce their cradle-to-gate environmental impacts and educate customers about the climate benefits of using composite products, of which there are many.
“FRP is clean energy enabling,” says Joe Fox, president of FX Consulting LLC and co-facilitator of IACMI’s Infrastructure & Construction Working Group. “FRP wind blades and towers facilitate sustainable wind energy on land and offshore.” Lightweight composites also require less energy to transport and install, a critical benefit for applications such as girders, rebar and bridge decks.
In addition, FRP can offer lifetime cost savings. “Durable FRP composites do not need to be repaired and replaced as frequently as other materials,” says Fox. He cites the example of the Halls River Bridge construction in Homosassa, Fla., which used GFRP and CFRP in place of steel to reinforce the concrete. An article published in the journal Advances in Civil Engineering Materials in 2019 asserts that the bridge’s life cycle cost is 20% lower because of reduced maintenance and replacement costs associated with FRP materials.
Composites also contribute to decarbonization. “A life cycle assessment of the Halls River Bridge indicates the CO2 emissions are 26% lower with FRP than with steel,” says Fox.
These benefits should grab the attention of designers, engineers, contractors and owners within infrastructure and construction. But it will require education and marketing from the composites industry, something that Nadeau and Kirby Beegles, PE, SE, senior project engineer at Martin/Martin Inc., discussed during a panel discussion at Composites Sustainability Today.
Going After Government Projects
Nadeau is on a mission to unlock the market potential for government-funded infrastructure projects. He believes the key to doing so is achieving buy-in from state DOTs.
“The decision-making about what materials to use, what contract mechanisms to employ, whether or not to advance and accelerate the deployment of solutions – those decisions occur in 52 institutions across the country,” says Nadeau. “The federal role is to provide resources and incentives to be innovative, while the states principally deploy the FHWA programs at the local level.”
Approximately 650,000 bridges – half of the country’s inventory – are owned by local and county government, which have chronically underfunded maintenance programs, says Nadeau.
“The operational reality is that when a steel bridge that’s rated to last 75 years hits about 35 or 40 years, we’re making a decision to replace it or spend more money maintaining it to last another 10 or 15 years,” he says. “The latter is a bad idea compared to building a new bridge with new materials that will last longer.”
Convincing local and county governments, as well as the engineers and contractors they work with, to consider FRP products first requires the backing of state DOTs. “Local governments are loathe to use materials that a state DOT has not blessed, sanctioned or adopted guidelines or specifications for,” says Nadeau.
He encourages the composites industry to campaign to DOTs in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico to make a commitment to advanced materials. Sustainability is critical to that campaign.
“A bridge or structure built using non-corroding advanced materials would be a generational bridge,” says Nadeau. A durable bridge featuring FRP components that require minimal maintenance could become a cost-saving asset to the community, rather than a cost burden, he adds.
“If we can persuade state DOTs to incorporate FRP composites in their structures program, it’s like the Good Housekeeping Seal of approval for engineering services that go way beyond transportation infrastructure,” says Nadeau.
Targeting the Private Sector
Making the argument for a sustainable design in private construction requires buy-in from asset owners, which can be challenging.
“Some owners are very progressive and forward-thinking. For others, it’s strictly a business decision,” says Beegles. “They are not typically going to spend money on something that doesn’t bring any tangible value to them for that specific product.”
Engineers at Martin/Martin educate clients and asset owners on the importance of sustainable design and how to achieve it in their buildings. They are part of the Structural Engineering Institute’s SE 2050 Commitment.
“Data shows that about 37% of global warming emissions come from the building industry, and we think about 11% of that comes from the structural systems in buildings,” says Beegles. “We have voluntarily committed to reducing or eliminating embodied carbon in our designs by 2050.”
There are four components to the SE 2050 program: education, engagement, advocacy and reporting. For the latter, the Structural Engineering Institute collects data on embodied carbon impacts and trends on structural systems throughout the country. Martin/Martin reported on a handful of projects this year and plans to ramp up its reporting efforts.
“We perform a whole building life cycle analysis, taking all the components that go into a building’s structural system and evaluating what their global warming potential is based on the volume or weight of the material,” says Beegles.
Composite products can play a pivotal role in the move toward sustainability. Martin/Martin worked on the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, which features 700 FRP exterior cladding panels designed and manufactured by Kreysler & Associates. Earlier this year, the composites manufacturer teamed up with ACMA and environmental consultancy Sustainable Solutions Corp. to develop a life cycle analysis and environmental product declaration for its composite panels. (Composites Manufacturing magazine featured an article on this process and other work by ACMA in its spring 2024 issue.)
“We love composite panels,” says Beegles. “The benefits that are really meaningful to what we do are the durability, the light weight and the long-term life cycle so the materials can withstand lots of elements for many years.”
Digging into the Data
Touting the benefits of FRP products isn’t enough for customers in the infrastructure and construction markets. They seek data to support claims of a product’s sustainability.
“For the government sector, it’s all about data, data, data,” says Nadeau. “The civil engineering community needs numbers to plug into their calculations. They need to depend on certifications and guide specifications, such as the one ACMA is driving with American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO).”
ACMA and its Transportation Structures Council collaborated with AASHTO’s Committee on Bridges and Structures to develop guide specifications for designing FRP pedestrian bridges. The second edition, renamed the LRFD Guide Specifications for the Design of FRP Pedestrian Bridges, was approved by state DOT bridge engineers in June.
Clients in the private sector are equally interested in data to comply with increasing legislation, as well as meet their own sustainability goals.
“Our building owners are asking, ‘Can you give me data to show exactly how much impact my building system has? Can you compare for me the decision I make to spend more money on a panel, finish or structural system that has a lower embodied carbon impact?’” says Beegles. “They want to be able to show that what they did made a difference.”
As engineering firms like Martin/Martin strive to offer more sustainable solutions – and contribute data to the SE 2050 Commitment database and others like it – having transparent data to back up a product’s sustainability will be essential. The CIRCLE Program will help ACMA members generate that through its soon-to-be-released LCA-to-EPD generator.
“Having easy access to EPDs for your products is crucial for us as designers to be able to communicate to asset owners, architects and contractors the specific sustainable metrics associated with FRP panels and other composite products,” says Beegles.
While data matters, the environmental impact is the ultimate aim.
“We want to see everybody working toward the same goal, which is creating materials that have a lower embodied carbon footprint,” says Beegles.
Susan Keen Flynn is managing editor of Composites Manufacturing magazine. Email comments to sflynn@keenconcepts.net.
What Is Embodied Carbon?
There’s lots of talk about reducing the embodied carbon of buildings and other structures, which represents a substantial percentage of global emissions. So, what is it?
Embodied carbon is the carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gas emissions, such as methane and nitric oxide, associated with the manufacture, transportation, installation, use, maintenance and disposal of materials or components used to construct a building or other structures. By contrast, operational carbon is the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the occupancy of a building, such as its heating and cooling.
“The Inflation Reduction Act provided funds for programs by the EPA and other agencies to reduce the embodied carbon associated with construction materials,” says ACMA’s sustainability leader John Schweitzer. “To remain competitive in these markets, manufacturers will need to demonstrate that use of their products reduces the embodied carbon of the built environment.”
This 80-foot-long truss bridge was installed in 2023 on the Morton Complex Perimeter Trail in Upper Saint Clair Township, Pa. It features Creative Composites Group’s SuperDeck® Lite FRP decking to meet H-5 loading and matching FRP handrailing.
Photo Credit: Creative Composites Group
This E.T. Techtonics modular fiberglass pedestrian bridge was installed in rural Pennsylvania.
Photo Credit: Creative Composites Group
