Last week, Lionel Lemay and Tien Peng of NRMCA, along with Bruce Chattin of Washington Aggregates and Concrete Association (WACA) and other construction industry stakeholders gathered at the University of Washington (UW) for the Carbon Leadership Forum’s Annual Meeting. The group convened to discuss the state of the concrete Product Category Rules (PCR), Whole Building Life Cycle Assessments and other new concepts from the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED v4.

LEED v4 will have dramatic consequences on building material selection for new buildings and major renovations when it is launched in November’s GreenBuild event. The Carbon Leadership Forum Annual Meeting was designed to bring together those with expertise in building design and life cycle assessment (LCA), to advance the development of Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) and to find opportunity in reduced environmental impacts from construction practices. NRMCA presented an update of the concrete industry’s move toward EPDs during the meeting and provided guidance for future developments. NRMCA worked with the Carbon Leadership Forum to develop the PCR for concrete which is the basis for which concrete producers develop EPDs through NRMCA’s EPD program, enabling concrete producers to meet the new provisions of LEED v4.