Enacts the "low-carbon building construction act"; relates to requiring construction of any building, addition or renovation greater than 25,000 square feet meet certain standards intended to reduce the embodied carbon emissions associated with the construction.
STATE OF NEW YORK
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7998--A
2025-2026 Regular Sessions
IN SENATE
May 15, 2025
___________
Introduced by Sens. KAVANAGH, CLEARE -- read twice and ordered printed,
and when printed to be committed to the Committee on Housing,
Construction and Community Development -- recommitted to the Committee
on Housing, Construction and Community Development in accordance with
Senate Rule 6, sec. 8 -- committee discharged, bill amended, ordered
reprinted as amended and recommitted to said committee
AN ACT to amend the executive law, in relation to enacting the "low-car-
bon building construction act"
The People of the State of New York, represented in Senate and Assem-bly, do enact as follows:
1 Section 1. Short title. This act shall be known and may be cited as
2 the "low-carbon building construction act".
3 § 2. The executive law is amended by adding a new section 382-c to
4 read as follows:
5 § 382-c. Low-carbon building construction. 1. For the purposes of
6 this section, the following terms shall have the following meanings:
7 (a) "covered products" means:
8 (i) structural concrete products, including ready mix, shotcrete,
9 precast, and concrete masonry units;
10 (ii) reinforcing steel products, including rebar and post tensioning
11 tendons;
12 (iii) structural steel products, including hot rolled sections, hollow
13 sections, plate, open-web steel joists, and metal deck;
14 (iv) engineered wood products including mass timber products such as
15 laminated veneer lumber, parallel strand lumber, cross-laminated timber,
16 dowel laminated timber, nail laminated timber, glulam laminated timber,
17 glulam beams and columns, and structural sawn lumber; and
18 (v) other materials the department designates by rule and reviews
19 every three years;
20 (b) "design professional of record" means a licensed architect or
21 engineer;
22 (c) "embodied carbon emissions" means the amount of greenhouse gas
23 emissions associated with the extraction, manufacturing, transport,
EXPLANATION--Matter in italics (underscored) is new; matter in brackets
[] is old law to be omitted.
LBD11868-03-6
S. 7998--A 2
1 installation, maintenance, and disposal of construction products
2 throughout the product's life;
3 (d) "global warming potential" means the potential climate change
4 impact of a product or process as measured by a life-cycle assessment.
5 It is the metric for tracking embodied carbon emissions and is reported
6 in units of carbon dioxide equivalent;
7 (e) "product and facility-specific environmental product declarations"
8 means a type III environmental product declaration, as defined by the
9 international organization for standardization standard 14025, repres-
10 enting a single product from a single manufacturing facility; and
11 (f) "whole building life-cycle assessments" means a cradle to grave
12 assessment covering life-cycle stages A-C as defined by the interna-
13 tional organization for standardization standard 21931-1, excluding
14 modules B6 and B7, or similarly robust whole building life-cycle assess-
15 ment methods or whole life carbon assessment standards that evaluate the
16 environmental impacts of a building including, at a minimum, global
17 warming potential.
18 2. The code shall require construction of any building, addition, or
19 renovation greater than twenty-five thousand square feet to meet at
20 least one of the following standards intended to reduce the embodied
21 carbon emissions associated with the construction.
22 (a) Construction of a building may comply with the requirements of
23 this section by maintaining and reusing at least forty-five percent of
24 an existing structure and/or envelope if the building does not exceed
25 the square footage of the existing structure by more than fifty percent.
26 The code or rules adopted by the department shall specify how the
27 percentage of an existing structure maintained and reused shall be
28 calculated, such as by cost, mass, area, volume, and/or other suitable
29 metrics.
30 (b) Construction of a building, addition, or renovation may comply
31 with the requirements of this section by demonstrating, and requiring in
32 the construction documents, that the life-cycle stage A1 through A3
33 embodied carbon emissions of the covered products used, measured in
34 terms of global warming potential for each covered product and summed up
35 at the project level, achieves the reduction in embodied carbon emis-
36 sions set forth in subdivision three of this section when compared to
37 the project's summed industry average global warming potential. Building
38 projects shall use project-specific material quantities and product and
39 facility-specific environmental product declarations to demonstrate
40 compliance. The code or rules adopted by the department shall specify
41 how covered materials shall be calculated, such as by cost, mass,
42 volume, and/or other suitable metrics, and shall establish how industry
43 averages shall be determined.
44 (c) Construction of a building, addition, or renovation may comply
45 with the requirements of this section by demonstrating through a whole
46 building life-cycle assessment that the project achieves the reduction
47 in embodied carbon emissions set forth in subdivision three of this
48 section when compared against a reference building that is functionally
49 equivalent in size, geographic location, function, and thermal perform-
50 ance. The materials and material quantities in the proposed building and
51 the reference building may vary, provided that the buildings are func-
52 tionally equivalent.
53 3. The code shall require that to be in compliance with this section
54 pursuant to paragraph (b) or (c) of subdivision two of this section,
55 construction projects commenced on or after January first, two thousand
56 thirty and on or before December thirty-first, two thousand thirty-two
S. 7998--A 3
1 shall achieve a fifteen percent reduction in embodied carbon emissions
2 from a project-wide static baseline using the carbon leadership forum
3 2030 materials baselines or comparable industry data sources specified
4 in the code or by rules adopted by the department, and construction
5 projects commenced on or after January first, two thousand thirty-three
6 shall achieve a thirty percent reduction in embodied carbon emissions
7 from such project-wide static baseline.
8 4. (a) The design professional of record responsible for the embodied
9 carbon calculations and reporting for any construction project subject
10 to the requirements of this section shall be specified in the architect
11 of record construction documents. The design professional of record
12 shall stamp an attestation that the designed building complies with the
13 code requirements and any rules adopted by the department pursuant to
14 this section. The attestation shall be submitted along with the permit
15 and documents showing compliance.
16 (b) For a building to be in compliance with this section pursuant to
17 paragraph (b) of subdivision two of this section, the design profes-
18 sional of record shall update quantity and embodied carbon emissions
19 calculations based on product and facility-specific environmental prod-
20 uct declarations from procured products and attest that they are accu-
21 rate and comply with the construction document requirements to the best
22 of the design professional's knowledge. These calculations shall be
23 verified as accurate within the industry standard of care with a letter
24 stamped by a design professional of record.
25 (c) For any construction project subject to the requirements of this
26 section, the department shall provide a worksheet to be completed by
27 project teams for consistent reporting.
28 (d) The design professional of record shall enter all embodied carbon
29 emissions reduction data on a standard form and public database created
30 and maintained by the department. At a minimum, the database shall
31 indicate whether the compliance pathway under paragraph (a), (b), or (c)
32 of subdivision two of this section was selected, and shall include basic
33 information about the project, project area, the reporting worksheet,
34 and how the project met the standards for the selected pathway.
35 (e) The department shall develop a public-facing website with educa-
36 tional resources to support implementation. The website shall:
37 (i) detail the embodied carbon emissions reduction requirements in the
38 code;
39 (ii) outline reporting requirements and guidelines;
40 (iii) provide instructions for the use of the database;
41 (iv) provide guidance for whole building life-cycle assessments;
42 (v) provide checklists, templates, and training to support implementa-
43 tion; and
44 (vi) provide a list of software that may be used to support compliance
45 pursuant to paragraph (c) of subdivision two of this section.
46 (f) The department shall conduct random audits on three percent of
47 projects subject to the requirements of this section annually, and shall
48 make audit results public.
49 5. The department shall report to the governor and the legislature a
50 baseline assessment of global warming potential of building construction
51 as defined by this section by December thirty-first, two thousand twen-
52 ty-nine, and progress towards achieving reductions in annual global
53 warming potential of building construction by December thirty-first, two
54 thousand thirty-two, and every three years thereafter.
55 § 3. This act shall take effect immediately.
