A provision tucked into the 730-page tax-and-climate law, valued at just 0.05% of the total price tag, has the potential to trigger big changes in one of the most carbon-intensive processes in the world: cement production.

The law gives the EPA $250 million to help companies measure, verify, and report the carbon content of the construction materials they make.

Concrete is responsible for at least 7% of carbon emissions worldwide, according to clean energy research group BloombergNEF. And the US will be using even more of it because both last year’s infrastructure law and this month’s climate measure authorize billions of dollars of new construction across the country.

If the Environmental Protection Agency’s new product declaration program takes off the way its Energy Star program has, those products could become more attractive to buyers, eventually pushing carbon-heavy competitors out of the market, said Andrew Himes, director of collective impact initiatives at the University of Washington’s Carbon Leadership Forum.

“If I’m an engineer and my client’s asking me to design a low-carbon building, and I go out to the market and I ask vendors for that information, and one of them doesn’t have it, they’re going to be a question mark,” said Eric Dunford, senior director of government affairs at CarbonCure Technologies, a sustainable concrete company. “You don’t want to be left behind.”

Several companies have begun offering green building materials, stripping out carbon through advanced manufacturing techniques or even embedding it within the materials themselves.

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