Perhaps the most powerful tool governments have available to them is the power of procurement. This is especially true for concrete, as governments are by far the largest buyers of concrete.

 

There are a growing number of laws and procurement guidelines requiring the preferential use of low or negative-carbon concrete in both the public and private sector. The LECCLA (Low Embodied Carbon Concrete Leadership Act) in New York and New Jersey and Buy Clean California are two of the most prominent examples.

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While these efforts are laudable, in order to maximize the potential of concrete as a carbon sink for emissions from across the economy – not just to offset the emissions of its own production, a simple, universal, and audit-able method for counting the carbon in concrete is needed.

 

CarbonStar provides minimum requirements and recommendations for the quantification and verification of the embodied carbon in a unit of concrete, including any carbon that is permanently sequestered during the production of concrete and/or its input materials.