Section 39.116.005 - Findings-2024 c 344The legislature finds and declares that:
(1) Washington state, through its extensive purchasing power, can reduce embodied carbon in the built environment, improve human and environmental health, grow economic competitiveness, and promote high labor standards in manufacturing by incorporating climate and other types of pollution impacts and the quality of working conditions into the procurement process.(2) Washington state is home to multiple world-class manufacturers that are investing heavily in reducing the carbon intensity of their products and that provide family-wage jobs that are the foundation for a fair and robust economy. Washington's procurement practices should encourage manufacturers and others to meet high environmental and labor standards and reduce their environmental footprint.(3) The private sector is increasingly demanding low carbon building materials that support good jobs in manufacturing. This market demand has rapidly accelerated innovation and led to increased production of low carbon building materials. As one of the largest consumers of building materials, Washington state has an opportunity to leverage its purchasing power to do even more to send a clear signal to the market of the growing demand for low carbon building materials.(4) With its low carbon electric grid and highly skilled workforce, Washington state is well-positioned to capture the growing demand for low carbon building materials and create and sustain a new generation of good, high-wage clean manufacturing jobs.(5) Washington has demonstrated a deep commitment to ensuring that the transition to a low carbon economy is fair and creates family-wage jobs. Both the clean energy transformation act and the climate commitment act tie public investments in infrastructure to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and to high road construction labor standards. Integrating manufacturing working conditions into the procurement process reaffirms and is consistent with the state's commitment to a fair transition.(6) A robust state and domestic supply of low carbon materials is critical for building a fair economy and meeting the needs of the low carbon transition, including securing the clean energy supply chain.(7) Environmental product declarations are the best available tool for reporting product-specific environmental impacts using a life-cycle assessment and informing the procurement of low carbon building materials. Environmental product declarations cannot be used to compare products across different product categories or different functional units.(8) The buy clean and buy fair policies established in chapter 344, Laws of 2024 are critical to reduce embodied carbon in the built environment, a goal identified by the Washington state 2021 energy strategy to meet the state's greenhouse gas emission limits, governor Inslee's Executive Order 20-01 on state efficiency and environmental performance, and the Pacific coast collaborative's pathbreaking low carbon construction task force.(9) Reducing embodied carbon in the built environment requires a holistic, comprehensive approach that includes designing buildings with a lower-embodied carbon footprint and making lower carbon products. Policies like the buy clean and buy fair policies established in chapter 344, Laws of 2024 are an important tool for increasing the manufacture of lower carbon products.(10) The 2021-2023 biennium budgets made critical progress on the buy clean and buy fair policies in chapter 344, Laws of 2024 by funding the creation of a publicly accessible database to facilitate reporting and promote transparency on building materials purchased for state-funded infrastructure projects and two large buy clean and buy fair pilot projects. This ongoing work to create a database to facilitate reporting of environmental impacts and labor conditions from pilot projects has provided a strong foundation to inform future work on buy clean and buy fair policies.(11) Providing financial assistance to small manufacturers to support the production of environmental product declarations will help small manufacturers offset costs they might incur when pursuing state contracting as a result of the requirements of chapter 344, Laws of 2024.Added by 2024 c 344,§ 1, eff. 6/6/2024.