NRDC Expert Blog
By Victoria Rome
The California legislature has a big opportunity to cut greenhouse gas emissions from one of the world’s most carbon-intensive products – concrete – by passing Senate Bill 778 authored by Senator Josh Becker. The bill would add concrete to the Buy Clean California Act, which requires the state to use low-carbon building materials in public works projects.
Following on the 2021 passage of SB 596, which mandated a roadmap for net-zero GHG emissions associated with cement by 2045, SB 778 would leverage the state’s considerable purchasing power to accelerate the large-scale development of low-carbon concrete. It would continue the momentum of overall low-carbon state procurement since the enactment of the Buy Clean California Act in 2018.
Concrete is the world’s most widely used building material and one of its fastest growing, due to voracious demand for new buildings and infrastructure in China, India, and other high growth economies. The manufacturing of cement, the key ingredient in concrete, produces nearly 8% of all global CO2 emissions. If the cement industry were a country, it would emit more GHGs than any other nation besides China, the U.S., and India.
In California, cement production accounts for about 2% of GHG emissions – the state’s second-largest industrial emitter after oil and gas production – and the state’s market is projected to grow by as much as 40% by 2040. It’s critical that we address this sector to both meet our aggressive emission reduction goals and, as California has done on many other fronts in the battle against climate change, to serve as a global model for climate action. As the world’s fifth-largest economy, the state’s power of the purse is a potent tool.