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HOUSE DOCKET, NO. 2812 FILED ON: 1/16/2025
HOUSE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . No. 3337
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts
_________________
PRESENTED BY:
Sean Garballey
_________________
To the Honorable Senate and House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in General
Court assembled:
The undersigned legislators and/or citizens respectfully petition for the adoption of the accompanying bill:
An Act relating to embodied carbon emission reductions in state-funded projects.
_______________
PETITION OF:
NAME:DISTRICT/ADDRESS :DATE ADDED:Sean Garballey23rd Middlesex1/16/2025 1 of 7
HOUSE DOCKET, NO. 2812 FILED ON: 1/16/2025
HOUSE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . No. 3337
By Representative Garballey of Arlington, a petition (accompanied by bill, House, No. 3337) of
Sean Garballey that the Division of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance implement
embodied carbon emission reductions in state-funded projects. State Administration and
Regulatory Oversight.
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts
_______________
In the One Hundred and Ninety-Fourth General Court
(2025-2026)
_______________
An Act relating to embodied carbon emission reductions in state-funded projects.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives in General Court assembled, and by the authority
of the same, as follows:
1 SECTION 1. Chapter 7C of the Massachusetts General Laws, as appearing in the 2022
2Official Edition is hereby amended by adding the following section: -
3 Section 73. (a) For the purposes of this section, the following terms shall have the
4following meanings unless the context clearly requires otherwise:
5 "Awarding authority" (i) a state agency for a contract for a public works project as
6defined in Section 44A of chapter 149 of the Massachusetts General laws; (ii) Institutions of
7higher education; (iii) Natural resource agencies, including the department of conservation and
8recreation, and the department of environmental protection; (iv) other state entities that receive
9funding from any state, general, supplemental or capital appropriations for a public works project
10contracted directly by the state agency; and (v) The department of transportation. 2 of 7
11 "Covered product" (i) Structural concrete products, specifically ready mix, shotcrete,
12precast, and concrete masonry units; (ii) Reinforcing steel products, specifically rebar and post
13tensioning tendons; (iii) Structural steel products, specifically hot rolled sections, hollow
14sections, plate, and metal deck; and (iv) Engineered wood products including mass timber
15products such as laminated veneer lumber, parallel strand lumber, cross-laminated timber, dowel
16laminated timber, nail laminated timber, glulam laminated timber, glulam beams and columns,
17and structural sawn lumber.
18 “Cradle-to-gate”, activities associated with a product or building’s life cycle from the
19extraction stage through production stage, and covering modules A1 through A3 in accordance
20with ISO Standards 14025 and 21930.
21 “Cradle-to-grave”, activities associated with a product or building’s life cycle from the
22extraction stage through disposal stage, and covering modules A1 through C4 in accordance with
23ISO Standards 14025 and 21930.
24 "Construction contractor", the business entity, a general contractor or joint venture
25contractor, holding the prime contract with the governmental entity to construct the eligible
26project.
27 "Department", the division of capital asset management and maintenance.
28 "Designer of record", licensed design professional, who is responsible for leading the
29design team, who shall oversee and manage the design, specification, or both, of the eligible
30products. 3 of 7
31 "Eligible project", a construction project larger than 50,000 gross square feet of space as
32defined in the state building code; or a building renovation project with a greater than 50 percent
33of the assessed value and the project is larger than 20,000 gross square feet of occupied or
34conditioned space as defined in the state building code.
35 "Embodied carbon", greenhouse gas emissions from the harvesting, extracting,
36manufacturing, transportation, installation, maintenance, replacement, and disposal of eligible
37products.
38 "Environmental product declaration", a type III environmental product declaration, as
39defined by the ISO 14025. Other equally robust life-cycle assessment methods and metrics that
40have uniform standards in data collection consistent with the ISO 14025, industry acceptance,
41and integrity may also be used. For consistency in the required calculations, only the impacts
42from life-cycle stages A1 through A3, also referred to as "cradle-to-gate," may be included.
43 “Global warming potential”, a numeric value that measures the total contribution to
44global warming from the emission of greenhouse gases, or the elimination of greenhouse gas
45sinks.
46 "Greenhouse gas" as defined in Chapter 298 of the acts of 2008.
47 “LCA Commons”, federally managed LCA Commons, an interagency community of
48practice for Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) research methods. This community of practice
49collaborates to share expertise and methods to move toward common Federal data modeling
50conventions and make Federal data sets freely available through a web-based data repository. 4 of 7
51 "Responsible bidder”, the eligible product supplier, the subcontractor that manufactures
52or provides for installation, or both, of the eligible product.
53 “Whole Building Life Cycle Assessment”, a cradle-to-gate whole building life cycle
54assessment performed in accordance with ISO 14040 and ISO 14044, excluding operating
55energy, that can be compared to a reference baseline building. The reference building shall be of
56the same size, geographic location, and thermal performance as the proposed building, and shall
57be functionally equivalent per ASTM E2921-22.
58 SECTION 2. On or before the date one year following enactment, the department shall
59promulgate rules that will result in embodied carbon reductions of at least 30% in eligible
60projects. The rules must establish that an awarding authority shall include in a specification for
61bids for an eligible project that the responsible bidder will comply with one of the following
62embodied carbon reduction compliance pathways to achieve the reduction in embodied carbon
63emissions:
64 (a)Performance pathway: comparative whole building life cycle assessment at
65design:
66 (i). projects shall conduct a cradle-to-grave whole building life cycle assessment
67performed in accordance with ISO 14040 and ISO 14044, excluding operating energy, and
68demonstrating a minimum 30 percent reduction in global warming potential (GWP) as compared
69to a reference baseline building from the LCA commons and/or database established in
70SECTION (3). The reference baseline building shall be of the same size, geographic location,
71and thermal performance as the proposed building, and shall be functionally equivalent per 5 of 7
72ASTM E2921-22. The products and product quantities in the proposed building and the reference
73building are permitted to vary;
74 (ii). software used to conduct the whole building life cycle assessment, including
75reference baseline building, shall have a data set compliant with ISO-14044, and ISO 21930 and
76the software shall conform to ISO 21931. The software tools and datasets shall be the same for
77evaluation of both the baseline building and the proposed building;
78 (b)Re-use pathway: building re-use wherein at least 45% of the existing structure is
79maintained.
80 (i). An alteration or addition to an existing building shall maintain at a minimum 45
81percent combined of the existing building’s primary structural elements (foundations; columns,
82beams, walls, and floors; and lateral elements) and existing building enclosure (roof framing,
83wall framing and exterior finishes). Window assemblies, insulation, portions of buildings
84deemed structurally unsound or hazardous, and hazardous materials that are remediated as part of
85the project shall not be included in the calculation;
86 (c)Prescriptive pathway: Comparison of Type III Environmental Product Declarations at
87procurement. Each product that is permanently installed and listed as a covered product shall
88have a Type III environmental product declaration (EPD). Eligible projects shall demonstrate
89that the project’s embodied carbon, averaged across 90 percent of covered products, is lower
90than industry average by 30%. To achieve this reduction, eligible projects must use project-
91specific material quantities and environmental product declarations to demonstrate that the
92products specified in contract documents have a lower global warming potential than the
93industry average as defined by the United States environmental protection agency by 30%, 6 of 7
94industry-wide environmental product declarations applicable to the product, or as established by
95an appropriate state agency.
96 (d) Verification of compliance with a pathway will be confirmed with the department and
97awarding authority through the following methods:
98 (i) For the performance pathway, a summary of the GWP analysis produced by the
99software and signed by the design professional of record shall be provided in the construction
100documents as documentation of compliance;
101 (ii) For the building reuse pathway, documentation shall be provided in the construction
102documents and signed by the design professional of record to demonstrate compliance;
103 (iii) For the prescriptive pathway, calculations to demonstrate compliance, Type III EPDs
104for products required to comply if included in the project, and signature of the design
105professional of record shall be provided on the construction documents. Updated EPDs for
106products used in construction shall be provided to the owner at the close of construction and to
107the department or awarding authority upon request. The department may require inspection
108during and at completion of construction to demonstrate substantial conformance. Inspection
109shall be performed by the design professional of record or third party acceptable to the enforcing
110agency.
111 (e) Data collected through any of the three compliance pathways described under
112subsections (a-c) of this section must be consistently transferred by the department or awarding
113authority to the federal LCA Commons and/or database established by the department in Section
1143. The project details will be anonymized, except for each eligible project’s global warming
115potential. 7 of 7
116 (f) The Department will conduct biennial reviews, starting 2 years after the rules
117promulgated pursuant to Section 2 are finalized, to determine further reduction goals over time,
118consistent with the intent of achieving net zero emissions by 2050, and will accordingly establish
119by rules increased embodied carbon emission reduction targets across all three pathways. In
120these reviews, the department may also consider adding additional compliance pathways.
121 SECTION 3. On or before the date one year following enactment, the department shall
122establish a database of representative Whole Building Life Cycle Assessments and/or elect to
123rely on the federally managed LCA Commons, reflecting an appropriate range of size, function,
124location, and occupancy conditions. This database and/or the LCA Commons, will be used to
125identify baseline buildings to evaluate improvements on global warming potential for covered
126projects.