“The Biden administration launched the Federal-State Buy Clean Partnership in 2023 to build upon existing efforts and accelerate the U.S. market for cleaner construction materials. Federal agencies designated billions of dollars in climate funding to help state governments and contractors track emissions and to enable domestic manufacturers to decarbonize their operations.
President Donald Trump has since abandoned the federal Buy Clean strategy and is attempting to rescind related grant programs. The about-face will undoubtedly delay a deep transformation of the country’s construction sector. But state agencies and industry associations say they’re forging ahead — guided by their own laws and commitments to slash embodied carbon.
‘Buy Clean is a great example of how states and other nonfederal actors can continue to press forward on climate action, regardless of what the federal government does,’ said Casey Katims, executive director of the U.S. Climate Alliance, a bipartisan coalition of two dozen governors.
The group is working to maintain collaboration among the 13 states that joined the federal-state Buy Clean initiative, and in recent weeks it has downloaded the datasets, analytical tools, and other relevant resources that the Trump administration could wipe from the internet. Katims noted that the alliance formed under similar circumstances in 2017, after Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement for the first time.
‘It’s quite literally in our DNA to sustain climate work at the state level,’ he said.”
Launched on June 1, 2017 by the governors of Washington, New York, and California to help fill the void left by President Trump’s initial decision to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Agreement, the Alliance has grown to include 24 governors from across the U.S. representing approximately 60% of the U.S. economy and 55% of the U.S. population. Governors in the Alliance have pledged to collectively reduce net greenhouse gas emissions by at least 26-28% by 2025, 50-52% by 2030, and 61-66% by 2035, all below 2005 levels, and collectively achieve overall net-zero greenhouse gas emissions as soon as practicable, and no later than 2050.
The Alliance’s states and territories will continue to advance innovative and impactful climate solutions to grow the economy, create jobs, and protect public health, and have a long record of action and results. In fact, the Alliance reduced its collective net greenhouse gas emissions by 19% between 2005 and 2022, while increasing collective GDP by 30%, and is on track to meet its near-term climate goal by reducing collective GHG emissions 26% below 2005 levels by 2025. The coalition’s states and territories are employing more workers in the clean energy sector, achieving lower levels of dangerous air pollutants, and preparing more effectively for climate impacts and executing more pre-disaster planning than the rest of the country.
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