Relates to reducing the embodied carbon emissions of buildings and building materials; provides that construction permitted under the state building code shall achieve a 15 percent reduction in embodied carbon emissions by 2030; provides three options for compliance.
STATE OF NEW YORK
________________________________________________________________________
8456
2025-2026 Regular Sessions
IN ASSEMBLY
May 16, 2025
___________
Introduced by M. of A. KELLES -- read once and referred to the Committee
on Governmental Operations
AN ACT to amend the executive law, in relation to reducing the embodied
carbon emissions of buildings and building materials
The People of the State of New York, represented in Senate and Assem-bly, do enact as follows:
1 Section 1. The executive law is amended by adding a new section 382-c
2 to read as follows:
3 § 382-c. Embodied carbon emission reduction. 1. For the purposes of
4 this section, the following terms shall have the following meanings:
5 (a) "covered products" means:
6 (i) structural concrete products, including ready mix, shotcrete,
7 precast, and concrete masonry units;
8 (ii) reinforcing steel products, including rebar and post tensioning
9 tendons;
10 (iii) structural steel products, including hot rolled sections, hollow
11 sections, plate, open-web steel joists, and metal deck;
12 (iv) engineered wood products including mass timber products such as
13 laminated veneer lumber, parallel strand lumber, cross-laminated timber,
14 dowel laminated timber, nail laminated timber, glulam laminated timber,
15 glulam beams and columns, and structural sawn lumber; and
16 (v) other materials the department designates by rule and reviews
17 every three years;
18 (b) "design professional of record" means a licensed architect or
19 engineer;
20 (c) "embodied carbon emissions" means the amount of greenhouse gas
21 emissions associated with the extraction, manufacturing, transport,
22 installation, maintenance, and disposal of construction products
23 throughout the product's life;
24 (d) "global warming potential" means the potential climate change
25 impact of a product or process as measured by a life-cycle assessment.
EXPLANATION--Matter in italics (underscored) is new; matter in brackets
[] is old law to be omitted.
LBD11868-02-5
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1 It is the metric for tracking embodied carbon emissions and is reported
2 in units of carbon dioxide equivalent;
3 (e) "product and facility-specific environmental product declarations"
4 means a type III environmental product declaration, as defined by the
5 international organization for standardization standard 14025, repres-
6 enting a single product from a single manufacturing facility; and
7 (f) "whole building life-cycle assessments" means a cradle to grave
8 assessment covering life-cycle stages A-C as defined by the interna-
9 tional organization for standardization standard 21931-1, excluding
10 modules B6 and B7, or similarly robust whole building life-cycle assess-
11 ment methods or whole life carbon assessment standards that evaluate the
12 environmental impacts of a building including, at a minimum, global
13 warming potential.
14 2. (a) The department shall amend the code as necessary to accomplish
15 the embodied carbon emissions reductions established in subdivision six
16 of this section by January first, two thousand twenty-six.
17 (b) This section shall apply to all new construction, additions, and
18 renovations twenty-five thousand square feet or larger.
19 (c) The department may introduce further more stringent criteria as
20 more data is collected over time.
21 (d) Projects covered under this section may choose one of the follow-
22 ing options to comply with the embodied carbon emission reduction
23 requirements of this section:
24 (i) maintaining an existing portion of a building structure and envel-
25 ope pursuant to subdivision three of this section;
26 (ii) demonstrating a reduction in A1 to A3 life-cycle stage emissions
27 in covered products pursuant to subdivision four of this section; or
28 (iii) demonstrating embodied carbon emissions reduction using a whole
29 building life-cycle assessment pursuant to subdivision five of this
30 section.
31 3. (a) Building projects that maintain at least forty-five percent of
32 an existing structure and envelope and do not add more than fifty
33 percent to the total area comply with the embodied carbon emissions
34 reductions requirements established in subdivision six of this section.
35 (b) The department shall adopt rules to determine how forty-five
36 percent reuse of an existing structure and envelope shall be calculated,
37 such as by cost, mass, area, or volume.
38 4. (a) (i) As an alternative to subdivision three or five of this
39 section, all building projects shall demonstrate, and require in the
40 construction documents, that the life-cycle stage A1 through A3 embodied
41 carbon emissions of the covered products used, measured in terms of
42 global warming potential for covered products and summed up at the
43 project level, meet the goals established in subdivision six of this
44 section when compared to the project's summed industry average global
45 warming potential.
46 (ii) To achieve such reduction, building projects shall use project-
47 specific material quantities and product and facility-specific environ-
48 mental product declarations to demonstrate compliance.
49 (b) The department shall adopt rules to determine how covered materi-
50 als shall be calculated, such as by cost, mass, or volume, and establish
51 how industry average shall be determined.
52 (c) The design professional of record responsible for the embodied
53 carbon calculations and reporting shall be specified in the architect of
54 record construction documents. The design professional of record shall
55 stamp an attestation that the designed building complies with this
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1 section. The attestation shall be submitted along with the permit and
2 documents showing compliance.
3 (d) The design professional of record shall update quantity and
4 embodied carbon emissions calculations based on product and facility-
5 specific environmental product declarations from procured products and
6 attest that they are accurate and comply with the construction document
7 requirements to the best of the design professional's knowledge. These
8 calculations shall be verified as accurate within the industry standard
9 of care with a letter stamped by a design professional of record.
10 (e) The department shall provide a worksheet to be completed by
11 project teams for consistent reporting.
12 5. (a) As an alternative to the requirements in subdivisions three and
13 four of this section, building projects shall demonstrate the embodied
14 carbon emissions reduction compliant with subdivision six of this
15 section, using a whole building life-cycle assessment as compared
16 against a functionally equivalent reference building. The reference
17 building shall be the same size, geographic location, function and ther-
18 mal performance. The materials and material quantities in the proposed
19 building and the reference building may vary, provided that the build-
20 ings are functionally equivalent.
21 (b) The department shall adopt rules to require compliance with a
22 quantification standard for building life-cycle greenhouse gas emis-
23 sions. Alternatively, the department may adopt rules to specify required
24 building element scope, life-cycle stages, reference study periods,
25 impact categories, allowable data sources, biogenic carbon modeling and
26 reporting guidance, material reuse and salvage reporting guidance, and
27 at which design stages the assessment should occur. The scope shall
28 include, at a minimum, the covered products.
29 (c) The design professional of record responsible for the embodied
30 carbon calculations and reporting shall be specified in the architect of
31 record construction documents and shall stamp an attestation that the
32 designed building complies with this section. The attestation shall be
33 submitted along with the permit and documents showing compliance.
34 (d) The department shall provide a worksheet to be completed by
35 project teams for consistent reporting.
36 6. Construction permitted under the code shall achieve a fifteen
37 percent reduction in embodied carbon emissions from a project-wide stat-
38 ic baseline using the carbon leadership forum 2023 material baselines or
39 comparable industry average data sources determined by the department,
40 or achieve a fifteen percent reduction in embodied carbon emissions
41 compared to the reference building as described in subdivision four of
42 this section by two thousand thirty; followed by a thirty percent
43 reduction in embodied carbon emissions by two thousand thirty-three.
44 7. (a) All embodied carbon emissions reduction data shall be entered
45 by the design professional of record on a standard form and public data-
46 base created and maintained by the department. At a minimum, the data-
47 base shall include basic information about the project, project area,
48 which compliance pathway was selected, the reporting worksheet, and how
49 the project met the standards for the selected pathway.
50 (b) The department shall develop a public-facing website with educa-
51 tional resources to support implementation. The website shall:
52 (i) detail the embodied carbon emissions reduction requirements in the
53 code;
54 (ii) outline reporting requirements and guidelines;
55 (iii) provide instructions for the use of the database;
56 (iv) provide guidance for whole building life-cycle assessments;
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1 (v) provide checklists, templates, and training to support implementa-
2 tion; and
3 (vi) provide a list of software that may be used to support compliance
4 with subdivision five of this section.
5 (c) The department shall conduct random audits on three percent of
6 projects annually.
7 8. (a) The department shall report its progress towards achieving the
8 thirty percent reduction in annual embodied carbon emissions by December
9 thirty-first, two thousand twenty-eight, and every three years thereaft-
10 er.
11 (b) The department shall report major findings from the database of
12 products and audits by December thirty-first, two thousand twenty-eight,
13 and every three years thereafter.
14 § 2. This act shall take effect immediately.
