17 October 2022
Crowell & Moring
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On October 4, 2022, the General Services Administration
(“GSA”) published a Request for Information
(“RFI”), seeking information “about the availability
of domestically manufactured, locally sourced low-carbon
construction materials” for governmentwide construction
procurement. Significantly, the results of the RFI are expected to
help inform how the GSA will spend the $2.15 billion appropriated
through Section 60503 of the Inflation Reduction Act
(“IRA”) to “acquire and install materials and
products for use in the construction or alteration of
buildings” under the GSA’s jurisdiction “that have
substantially lower levels of embodied greenhouse gas emissions
associated with all relevant stages of production, use, and
disposal as compared to estimated industry averages of similar
materials or products[.]”
Building on GSA’s previous efforts to implement new
“low embodied carbon” concrete and “environmentally
preferable” asphalt used in GSA construction and building
projects (covered here), the Administration is seeking to expand
its Buy Clean Initiative to most carbon-intensive
materials – including, concrete, steel, glass, asphalt,
aluminum, insulation, roofing materials, gypsum board, and
structural engineered wood – used in the construction of
buildings, roads, and bridges. GSA has divided these materials into
three tiers of descending order of priority, with Tier 1 materials
(concrete, steel, glass, and asphalt) as the…