Living Future Tapped for EPA Grant To Expand Materials Program

September 18, 2024 /3BL/ - The International Living Future Institute (Living Future) is honored to have been selected to support the Inflation Reduction Act’s efforts to decarbonize the built environment. As announced by the U.S. EPA in July, Living Future was one of the 38 grant recipients selected to receive part of the federal government’s $160 million investment to “report and reduce climate pollution from the manufacturing of construction materials and products.” With the support of this grant, Living Future will deepen its industry collaborations to assess the environmental performance of building materials and streamline the specification of more climate-friendly options.

The built environment is a major contributor to planetary warming. It’s estimated that buildings and construction account for 37% of all energy-related carbon dioxide emissions and, according to the EPA, “construction materials used in buildings and other built infrastructure account for more than 15% of annual global greenhouse gas emissions.” Living Future recognizes that the built environment community can also play a key role in securing a safe and healthy future, integrating resilience and emissions-drawdown strategies into all design, construction, and operating decisions.

Through its building programs, Living Future promotes a multi-pronged approach that addresses both embodied and operational carbon reduction. Once seen as a nearly insurmountable challenge, these programs are now utilized by the largest architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) firms, multiple Fortune 500 companies, major global universities, and innovative developers. These clients are building corporate offices, laboratories, multi-family residences, retail spaces, warehouses, and some of the most innovative projects around the world aligned with Living Future standards.

To scale the decarbonization of buildings, one area that needs greater attention is the ability of owners and project teams to easily specify climate-friendly products and materials. Thankfully, Living Future has a roadmap to address this need.

Since 2012, Living Future's Declare program has helped disclose ingredients and translate complex material health data into accessible and actionable information. More than 370 manufacturers, ranging from small craft producers to Fortune 500 corporations, currently participate in Living Future’s building materials programs. They publicly disclose ingredient information down to 100 parts per million and screen against our Red List, ensuring a commitment to human and ecological health. The free Declare database boasts nearly 1,500 labels representing 16,000+ products, and is visited by approximately 100,000 people annually. This platform facilitates easy specification of products that contribute to healthy indoor environments and align with various rating systems, including the Living Building Challenge, LEED, WELL, and Enterprise Green Communities.

Slated to receive $4.7 million over five years from the EPA grant, Living Future intends to leverage the model of Declare to accelerate market transformation of climate-friendly products. A new label focused on emissions will include translation and evaluation of environmental product declarations (EPDs) -- third-party verified reports of a product’s environmental impacts across its life cycle, such as global warming potential, primary energy use, and ozone depletion potential. Living Future views this as a crucial step to drive the widespread adoption of EPDs and to motivate manufacturers to continue investing in optimized environmental performance.

“We are designing this label program to help accelerate EPD adoption in our industry,” says Lindsay Baker, CEO of Living Future. “We know that distilling data and making it digestible to design teams and owners will empower them and move the market.”

Living Future plans to work with partners and stakeholders to develop industry-aligned technical requirements and structure for the program, as well as grow awareness and action in the community. One such partner is mindful MATERIALS (mM), a non-profit that aligns the building industry around a common language, clear market signal, and connected data to drive demand for material transparency and optimization. Living Future’s new label will align with mM’s Common Materials Framework, which organizes more than 650 relevant sustainability factors into five sustainability topics. CEO of mM, Annie Bevan says, “We are thrilled to partner with Living Future to accelerate towards a world where extensive, verified EPD and other sustainability data is digitized and flowing -- and supporting project-level decisions and scaling the holistic impact reduction of the built environment.”

A manufacturing partner, Armstrong World Industries, makes ceiling and wall systems. Anita Snader, the company’s Senior Sustainability Manager, says, “Our company is committed to offering feedback to guide the development and be an early adopter to pilot the new label. We believe Living Future has proven to be highly successful at meaningful market transformation.”

Selections are contingent upon completion of legal and administrative requirements and grantees are tentatively expected to begin receiving their funding in Q4 2024.

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ABOUT the International Living Future Institute

The mission of the International Living Future Institute (Living Future) is to cultivate a society that is socially just, culturally rich, and ecologically restorative. To do this, the organization envisions a living future and shows that it works better in practice and policy. Living Future is premised on the belief that providing a compelling vision for the future is needed to reconcile humanity’s relationship with the natural world. Living Future’s programs have shaped more than 55 million square feet of real estate development across the United States and around the world. Learn more at http://www.living-future.org.

Media Contact: 
Kira Gould | kiragould@kiragould.com