EPD Assistance

Project Overview

In July 2024, PCA was one of 38 organizations selected for funding under the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) grant program for Reducing Embodied Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Construction Materials and Products. This grant program is funded by the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, which provided $250 million to the EPA for the purpose of technical assistance to support industry development of environmental product declarations (EPDs). PCA’s application for $2.4 million over 5 years was supported by three collaborating organizations: the American Coal Ash Association (ACAA), the Natural Pozzolan Association (NPA), and the Slag Cement Association (SCA).

PCA’s workplan includes the following:

$1.5 million in financial assistance to eligible manufacturers of cements and Supplementary Cementitious Materials (SCM) to support the development of facility-specific EPDs for their products by offsetting development and verification costs. See Financial Assistance below.
Training and on-call technical assistance to support the development of facility-specific EPDs by eligible manufacturers. These resources will be used to leverage the financial support provided through the grant and help manufacturers get to the finish line with their EPD development. See Technical Assistance below.
Development of robust national industry-average EPDs for cements, fresh and harvested coal ash, slag cement, and raw and calcined natural pozzolans. Regional EPDs will also be published if there is sufficient data, which requires participation by manufacturers in the life cycle inventory (LCI) surveys. These EPDs will be revised and republished in the final year of the project.
Facilitating the development of a unified product category rule (PCR) for cementitious materials, replacing three existing PCRs for cements, slag cements, and SCMs.
Development and maintenance of an LCA Calculator and Benchmarking Tool for concrete mix design, which will be a successor to SCA’s existing LCA Calculator.

PCA and its collaborators have the following goals for the end of the project:

Over 90% of cement plants have facility-specific EPDs for their primary products (up from ~50% in 2024).
Over 80% of eligible SCM plants have facility-specific EPDs for their products (up from ~0% in 2024).

Financial Assistance

PCA will soon be accepting applications for financial assistance from eligible manufacturers of cements and SCMs. Up to $5,000 per facility will be available for those developing facility-specific EPDs for the first time for a given product category (cement, slag cement, or SCMs). Subsequent application rounds (open quarterly) will be open to all eligible manufacturers, including those that are revising existing EPDs or developing EPDs for new products. Completed application forms should be submitted to epagrant@cement.org and assistance decisions are anticipated to be issued no more than 45 days after the quarterly application deadline.

The application form and application instructions will be posted by early December 2024.

November 19, 2024 PCA Informational Webinar Slides

Technical Assistance

PCA plans to offer technical assistance to U.S. manufacturers of cements and SCMs to aid in the development of their facility-specific EPDs. This will consist of:

Training webinars (live and archived) tailored to each current PCR
Written resources to guide you through the development and verification process
On-call assistance from LCA and EPD experts

These resources will be developed and offered through contracted consultants. Details on scheduled webinars, links to archived webinars, and downloads of written resources will be posted here as they become available. Instructions on contacting the on-call experts will be shared with manufacturers approved for financial assistance.

Work with Us (Contracting Opportunities)

PCA plans to make use of contractors and consultants to provide certain services on this project. Contracting opportunities will be posted here.

FAQs

An eligible manufacturer must be located in the U.S. (or be the U.S. business unit of a multinational company). Eligible facilities must be located in the U.S., be the site of manufacturing activities (A3 life cycle module) as defined by the applicable PCR, and have a minimum total annual production capacity of 10,000 tons per year for all cement and SCM products produced at the facility. Facilities with smaller production volumes may be considered on a case-by-case basis. Import terminals that receive finished cement or SCM products are not eligible for assistance under this grant program.
No. Trade association membership in PCA or its collaborator organizations (ACAA, NPA, and SCA) is not required and will not be a factor in considering assistance requests. EPA does require that we collect information on trade association membership for reporting purposes, however.
Yes. PCA anticipates being able to fund a cement or SCM manufacturing facility twice during the course of the project, to support revisions of EPDs and/or development of EPDs for new products.
EPA has developed a list of criteria that EPDs should satisfy to be considered robust. PCA’s application proposes focusing on ensuring that future EPDs are interoperable, digital, and machine-readable, and improving transparency with regards to uncertainty and assumptions made in developing EPDs. All EPDs developed with EPA funding support must be digital and machine-readable, and we believe the forthcoming cement PCR provides adequate provisions to satisfy this requirement.

Get in Touch

If you have questions about applying for assistance available through this grant, potential contracting opportunities, or other questions related to PCA’s grant, contact PCA staff supporting the grant at epagrant@cement.org.