Impacts of new sustainable building policy recommendations on steel suppliers

Steel suppliers impacted by proposed policy changes requiring builders and developers to build more low carbon, resilient and equitable buildings will benefit from the ASI’s SSA certification program. Among the eight key recommendations in the Property Council of Australia and Green Building Council of Australia (GBCA) Every Building Counts 2.0 federal policy plan: 

• minimum requirements for reporting and reducing embodied carbon for new builds and refurbishments to be introduced into the National Construction Code
• introduction of embodied carbon reduction requirements for government projects
• adoption of building sustainability rating systems such as Green Star and NABERS to drive sustainable outcomes in all new government projects and existing assets
• development of robust standards to support product manufacturers and importers to calculate and disclose embodied emissions content.

 To achieve these obligations, government and project proponents will increasingly require more sustainable or ‘Green Star approved’ building products and materials. The SSA certification program meets this obligation by assuring steel suppliers are meeting best practice environmental social and governance standards in fabricating or processing their finished steel products, and the steel feedstock is sourced from responsible steelmakers that are actively reducing their carbon emissions during manufacturing of semi-finished products. It also rewards and encourages the development Environmental Product Descriptions (EPDs) that provide transparent and comparable measurement of the carbon impacts for steel products.