ERG’s Peter Bacas co-authors newly published New York State Embodied Carbon Near-Term Recommendations
On September 23, the New York State Embodied Carbon Working Group published its near-term recommendations to reduce embodied carbon emissions, co-authored by ERG’s Peter Bacas. The report, New York State Embodied Carbon Near-Term Recommendations, lays out actionable, practical recommendations for reducing embodied carbon over the next decade to help achieve the state’s goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 85 percent of 1990 levels by 2050.
Embodied carbon refers to the emissions of construction materials throughout their life cycles—including their production, transportation, maintenance, and disposal.
“You can’t reduce what you can’t measure,” said Bacas, a senior manager of standards and sustainable strategies at ERG. “These recommendations outline how New York State can use tools like environmental product declarations and life cycle assessments to quantify the environmental impacts of construction activities, ultimately helping public and private project teams reduce construction-related impacts.”
These recommendations will form part of the New York State Embodied Carbon Action Plan, to be published in the coming months. You can read the full report here.
The New York State Embodied Carbon Working Group—made up of professionals from the Natural Resources Defense Council, American Institute of Architects New York Chapter, American Society of Civil Engineers, Kohn Pendersen Fox (KPF), STV Inc., the Carbon Leadership Forum, and ERG—developed the recommendations over a period of three months.
The recommendations focus on three interconnected strategies:
- Providing funding support and financial incentives, like grant programs and tax exemptions, that make it easier for material manufacturers, designers, builders, and property owners to manufacture, disclose, buy, and use low-carbon materials.
- Establishing new statutory requirements that mandate greenhouse gas emission reductions (with interim targets), leverage state procurement by requiring quantification of embodied carbon impacts on state-funded projects, and empower agencies to convene advisory groups to set standards.
- Shifting New York’s construction industry toward waste reduction and reuse, including by creating a network of material processing hubs and prioritizing workforce development programs that make it easier to deconstruct and reclaim construction materials.
ERG is a leader in life cycle assessment, and we invite you to learn more about our latest efforts to support the disclosure of environmental impacts across industrial sectors: