In a related effort, the Environmental Protection Agency last year awarded $160 million of the IRA funding to dozens of businesses to develop environmental product declarations — akin to a climate nutrition label — that measure and disclose the CO2 emissions associated with extracting, transporting, and manufacturing individual products. Just last month, the Federal Highway Administration granted another $1.2 billion to support 39 state agencies as they work to study, track, and buy cleaner materials for road transportation projects.
Much of that IRA funding has already been disbursed or legally obligated, which makes it much harder for the Trump administration to try and claw back. Yet as of this week, the policy directives and task force underpinning the Buy Clean agenda no longer exist. Along with rescinding Executive Order 14057, Trump’s “Unleashing American Energy” order also directed federal agencies to “prioritize cost-effectiveness” when procuring goods and services “to the greatest extent.”
Kwon said he’s less concerned about what happens to the federal funding than he is about losing three years’ worth of progress on developing expertise, publishing data, and establishing relationships among government workers, contractors, and manufacturers. The White House website has taken down many announcements and resources related to Buy Clean. It’s unclear whether national databases on emissions inventories and product declarations will remain online and accessible.
“That learning is something that should be safeguarded, along with the money that we’ve already put into the system,” Kwon said. “Let’s expand that learning — not waste it.”
Rescinding Buy Clean also adds uncertainty for the slate of new U.S. facilities that received federal funding to demonstrate novel, lower-carbon manufacturing methods. Under Biden, for example, six cement projects were selected to receive up to $1.5 billion in awards from the Department of Energy to demonstrate everything from carbon-capture systems to alternative cement chemistries. Federal agencies were meant to serve as crucial early customers to help lower the risk and open the doors to private buyers.
Sublime Systems, one of the award recipients, is set to receive nearly $87 million to build its first commercial-scale facility in Holyoke, Massachusetts, which is expected to begin producing materials for the market around 2027 or 2028. The startup has developed an electrochemical process for making cement in a way that doesn’t emit carbon or require fossil fuel–burning kilns.
Joe Hicken, Sublime’s vice president of business development and policy, said that reducing public procurement policies like Buy Clean “is a miss for domestic manufacturing and domestic innovation.” Still, the startup “has been mindful not to rely on it for our business model and financial projections,” he said, noting that “companies like Sublime must be able to scale resilient, commercially competitive products that are viable and attractive to all customers.”
For U.S. steel producers, such market competition could push the industry to address emissions from existing and future facilities, even in the absence of a federal Buy Clean policy.
The American Iron and Steel Institute, a nonprofit trade group, said it will continue working with its members to document and reduce the CO2 emissions associated with making the essential metal. That’s because private-sector buyers like global automakers and architectural groups are increasingly looking to source materials with lower embodied emissions, said Kevin Dempsey, the institute’s president and CEO.
“It’s not just in the U.S.,” he said. “Every international steel conference I go to, people from all over the world are talking about sustainability and steel: What’s the best way to measure [emissions], what’s the right methodology to use, and what are the technologies that can facilitate further emissions reductions going forward?”
Dempsey added that Buy Clean is just one tool for advancing lower-emissions industrial products. Another approach — one that could gain more traction under the tariff-friendly Trump administration — could be to adopt trade policies that penalize imports of steel made in highly polluting overseas facilities. Making cleaner domestic steel “is a competitive advantage for us,” he said.
And while the federal Buy Clean strategy was pivotal, Williams of the Center for American Progress said he expects that state agencies will keep broadening their own Buy Clean strategies to curb industrial pollution within their jurisdictions. On the Pacific Coast, the states of California, Washington, and Oregon are working together to boost the use and production of low-carbon materials across the region.
“You can see this starting to coalesce together into something bigger,” Williams said of state-level initiatives. “We can still have a pretty substantial impact on public procurement.”
