AISC Celebrates Earth Day with Updated EPDs

To help celebrate Earth Day, the domestic structural steel industry has issued updated environmental product declarations to help designers and building owners design more environmentally friendly buildings and bridges.

The American Institute of Steel Construction develops industry-average EPDs for three products: fabricated hot-rolled structural sections, fabricated steel plate, and fabricated hollow structural sections, with the latter developed in conjunction with the Steel Tube Institute.

These documents are designed to facilitate an accurate, apples-to-apples comparison of the structural materials on the market today. The EPDs illustrate what the industry has achieved through decades of innovation.

“Many people associate steel with old smokestacks and air pollution, but structural steel is now the premier green building material,” said AISC President Charles J. Carter, S.E., P.E., Ph.D. “Over the past three decades, the steel industry has reduced greenhouse gas and overall emissions by 36%. And the American structural steel industry is leading the way to a greener future with a carbon footprint nearly half the world average. By comparison, Chinese structural steel has three times the global warming potential of domestic steel.”

America’s steel mills rely on steel scrap rather than mined raw materials. Almost 93% of a typical wide flange member is recycled material–old cars, refrigerators, and even old buildings, melted into new steel with pure electricity. Steel is the most recycled material on the planet, and structural steel leads the way. Structural members can be recycled over and over again with no loss of quality.

As America’s energy grid increasingly relies on sustainable electricity, experts expect steel’s carbon footprint to shrink by 41%. Steel mills also are building sustainable power fields, installing carbon scrubbing equipment, and taking other measures to make structural steel a truly carbon-neutral building material. AISC’s member fabricators are taking steps to reduce their energy consumption, such as by adding solar roofs.