Overview
Updated January 2025
As part of New York State’s commitment to reducing the embodied carbon of building and infrastructure projects, the GreenNY Council has issued guidance, per Executive Order 22, for all Affected Entities on reporting and disclosure of commonly used construction materials.
The first phase of GreenNY Council Embodied Carbon Guidance focuses on data collection - of material quantities and Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs). The intent of this guidance is to:
- drive the demand for and creation of EPDs in the market
- to create a market for low-embodied carbon construction materials, and
- to benchmark New York State’s performance on the environmental impact of our construction materials – with a view to setting limits in the future.
The Embodied Carbon Guidance
- Identifies commonly used, high-intensity construction materials for reporting and disclosure
- Contains sample contract language for agencies to include in their standard contract templates
- Lays out a reporting timeline for inclusion of language in existing templates, and for annual reporting
- Regular reporting of material quantities by contractors via an online reporting tool
- Annual reporting of applicable contracts by State agencies
Current Guidance – Version 3, January 2025
EO 22 Embodied Carbon Guidance Version 3 (Jan 2025) removed the cost threshold from the applicability criteria for Department of Transportation projects (and similar). DOT projects must only meet the material quantity thresholds, not the $1 million project cost threshold.
Previous Guidance Versions
- EO 22 Embodied Carbon Guidance, Version 2, January 2024 - Version 2 (June 2024) introduced factors for converting quantities of flat glass expressed by area in square feet to weight to facilitate emissions calculations using global warming potentials from corresponding EPDs. These factors are directly from the National Glass Association.
- EO 22 Embodied Carbon Guidance, Version 1, 2023
Applicability
This guidance is for New York State construction contracts awarded by Affected Entities (per E.O.#22 – see Appendix A) signed after October 1, 2023. If it is a non-transportation contract, this guidance applies only to State Contracts over $1 million. For transportation contracts the applicability is by material quantity only, not construction cost.
Covered Construction Material | Minimum quantity for disclosure | Minimum quantity for disclosure |
| Concrete mixes | 50 cubic yards or more | 200 cubic yards (per mix design) |
| Asphalt mixes | 16,854 pounds (or 10 cubic yards) or more | 8,000 short tons (per mix design) |
Steel
| 20,000 pounds or more for rebar 5,000 pounds or more, for all others | 20,000 pounds or more for rebar (per fabrication location) 15,000 pounds or more for all other categories (ii – v) per fabrication location |
Glass1
| 2,000 square feet or more | 2,000 square feet |
1UPDATED June 2024: The EO22 Embodied Carbon guidance Covered Construction Materials’ table has a threshold for flat glass that is based on square feet. Typically flat glass is ordered by area, however, the Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) for flat glass use a weight measurement - pounds or tons. So when reporting glass, especially glass that has an EPD, please ensure that you are also capturing the thickness of the glass as this will allow you to calculate the weight. When calculating the weight, please use this link (https://ogs.ny.gov/flat-glass-conversion-factors) to download the National Glass Association’s Flat Glass area to weight conversion factors. Or see Appendix A.
- Who should use this: Project managers, Procurement and sustainability leads for the applicable agencies will need to be familiar with the reporting requirements for themselves and their contractors.
- All relevant contract and specifications documents should be updated to reflect the required collection of data by October 1, 2023.
- Annual reporting will begin August 31, 2024, for contracts signed after Oct 1, 2023.
- For more information, future webinars and other communications, check back on this page.
Resources
For further resources, please also see the Carbon Leadership Forum’s website, including this introductory video training series.
If you are a state employee you can join the interagency Embodied Carbon Working Group by emailing your agency’s Sustainability Coordinator and requesting the information to join the Embodied Carbon Working Group. If you are not state staff you can learn more by signing up for our Embodied Carbon mailing list this where you can get the latest updates on this topic.