Webinar | SCoBA Supplier Webinar April 2026

In this webinar recorded on April 15, 2026, staff from the Center for Green Market Activation and RMI explain the process for the Sustainable Concrete Buyers Alliance (SCoBA) RFP, including eligibility requirements.

A full transcript of the webinar is available below. Presentation slides can be accessed here. 

ANDREW ALCORTA:
I’ll begin by thanking everyone for joining us this morning, or afternoon, depending on where you are in the world, to learn a little bit about the work that we are doing here at SCoBA. We will have time for questions at the end, and so I would encourage folks to keep those questions. I believe there should be an option for you to input them throughout the presentation, and we will come back to those. With that, if we can dive into the presentation.

We’ll start with just a quick overview of the agenda and objectives for today. We really want to use the next hour to make sure that suppliers in the cement space are informed and understand the RFP process that the Sustainable Concrete Buyers Alliance is currently operating, so that we can walk through the details of that, the intent, as well as to address your questions. We will spend quite a bit of time on eligibility requirements to try to ensure that that is as clear as possible over the course of the time today. So we’ll go through a quick welcome. We’ll spend a little bit of time talking about SCoBA as an organization, and then we will really dive into the RFP process before getting into Q&A.

With that, I will also start quickly by saying that antitrust compliance is something that we take very seriously throughout the entirety of this process. If at any point folks feel that there is anything that is starting to edge up to a competitive line that may be an area of concern, please flag that in the questions, and we don’t anticipate this, but happy to adjust course if that is necessary. Anything that is commercial in nature, we ask that you all do not share that during the course of this conversation to make sure that we are staying on the right side of these lines.

And with that, I’ll take a moment here to introduce myself and the broader team here. So I am Andrew Alcorta. I am a senior director at the Center for Green Market Activation. I’ll talk a little bit more about what both GMA and RMI do in just a moment. But on the screen here, you will see the broader team that has contributed to the SCoBA effort more broadly and to establishing this RFP, as well as doing quite a bit of work to try to establish a framework for book and claim in the cement and concrete sector. I will not go through introductions for everyone on this page, but you will hear from many folks here over the course of the presentation, as well as during the Q&A time.

Quickly, I do want to introduce the organizers of SCoBA. This is a joint initiative between RMI and GMA, or the Center for Green Market Activation. And we have both collaborated on designing this system, standing up SCoBA, and operating it to try to catalyze the development of low-emission cement and concrete in this sector more broadly.

RMI is an organization that I suspect many folks are familiar with here. Their mission is really focused on accelerating the clean energy transition. And they have been working on the challenge of decarbonizing cement and concrete for several years, and I have had the good fortune of interacting with them across multiple roles that I have had and different hats I have worn in this pursuit.

GMA, or the Center for Green Market Activation, is also a nonprofit, and we are focused fundamentally on deploying novel systems like book and claim to hard-to-abate sectors to try to accelerate and catalyze decarbonization of those sectors. And we have a long history of organizing and running buyers alliances to try to connect companies with meaningful Scope 3 targets and initiatives to decarbonize their supply chains with producers that actually drive decisions that will result in lower product emissions, and connect the two to try to accelerate action here.

You see some of the sectors that we have been engaged in at the bottom here across various RMI and GMA initiatives, and I will talk a little bit more about that later.

If we zoom in on the challenge of cement and concrete decarbonization specifically, I suspect I am preaching to the choir, looking at many of the names of the participants here, and so I will be brief, but it is a really tricky sector to decarbonize and to make the business case to decarbonize here.

What we see is, one, the underlying technical challenge, the emissions profile associated with producing cement and concrete is inherently challenging to address when you consider the process emissions.

What we have seen is for deeply decarbonized products, there is a material premium. And getting folks to actually pay that premium has been a source of uncertainty for many producers.

Uncertainty about demand for low-carbon products. Is it actually going to materialize? How long is it going to materialize for? At what price point?

Production is highly localized here. So even where low-carbon production has emerged, how can we find a set of buyers within the catchment area of that facility, or through a book and claim system, trying to break that down and really enlarge the geography that could be served here?

Limited visibility into products in the supply chain. So the end users that are trying to decarbonize their supply chains are often struggling to find solutions in the markets in which they operate. And if we take that from the other end of the chain, producers in these markets are often looking at the fact that buyers with targets, with budgets to pay for a low-carbon product, are often very far removed from where they sit in the value chain. And coordinating through the intermediaries in the middle of the cement and concrete value chain can be very difficult, resulting in challenges of monetizing low-carbon production.

The results of this context and this landscape is that we see supply, in many cases, is really, I don’t think waiting for it is necessarily the right answer here, but needs to see that strong demand signal and see motion towards firm monetization of low-carbon products before they can make very significant investments to produce those products. And on the demand side, they are often looking around saying, “I can’t find the low-carbon products that I need.” And this is the challenge that we fundamentally see a need to solve here.

If we go to the next slide, we see book and claim systems as a very effective way of trying to break this gridlock, and specifically here by separating from the physical product, the emissions intensity of that product, and recording that on a separate environmental attribute certificate. We see an opportunity to allow the physical product to transact just as it always has but take that environmental attribute certificate and directly transact between the producer of the low-emissions product and a downstream buyer that is looking to address their Scope 3 emissions and challenges in that area. And by creating that direct linkage and doing so in a standardized way, we create flexibility and new opportunities for producers of low-carbon materials to monetize that activity.

The goal here at the end of the day is you have given producers a new revenue stream associated with the carbon intensity of their product, and you have given the downstream buyers of these products, or users of these products, the ability to address their Scope 3, where previously they were largely stuck. And so our hope here is that this will actually unlock the investments in large-scale decarbonized projects, and it will allow buyers downstream to actually meet their Scope 3 targets, rather than being stuck in the gridlock that we so often see.

We recently applied this model to cement and concrete specifically and released, earlier this year, a book and claim framework for cement and concrete. We recognize that this is a very complex sector, and applying this model requires quite a bit of nuance when you think about how does this work in practice, what should the guardrails be? And this framework was really an attempt to lay out that logic. It was informed by stakeholders across the sector, NGOs, legacy producers, and novel producers and startups, as well as a large number of buyers, with academics consulted through the process. We think that this is a really important step to begin monetizing low-carbon production in the sector. And this work was prepared in concert with the broader meta standards that are emerging in the space.

And I’ll name the three here briefly on the right. The Advanced Indirect Mitigation standard, which is intending to provide quality criteria for environmental attribute certificates and other similar mechanisms, the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, which is going through a set of revisions, as well as the Science-Based Target initiative, which is drafting a new version of its corporate net zero standard. All of this was really structured to operate in concept, and in concert, because we think that having buy-in from those voluntary standard setters is going to be critical to actually unlock the demand the sector needs.

If we go to the next page, I very quickly want to talk about how all of these pieces interact, because I recognize that the standards landscape is complex and seemingly only becoming more so. The point I will start with is, as GMA and RMI, we very intentionally did not want to recreate the wheel here, but rather use the constructs that already exist in the space, to avoid duplication.

And so as we think about the layers here, the Greenhouse Gas Protocol and the Science-Based Targets initiative really oversee the rules for voluntary carbon accounting and target setting. And we think that that is their role. We are not trying to play directly in that space, but rather take cues from them and follow the guidance and direction that they have given.

One level down, there is the Advanced Indirect Mitigation platform, which was actually published yesterday by a consortium including the Center for Green Market Activation, that provides additional criteria on how you should think about indirect mitigation, how you can think about value chain association, and what actually differentiates a high-quality environmental attribute certificate from a potentially low-quality or risky one. In addition, ISO recently released additional guidance on book and claim systems.

The next level down is the framework that I alluded to a moment ago, that we recently published and released, and we see this conforming to all of the layers that you see above here, and we took very intentional efforts to ensure that there would not be conflict there.

In addition, we have leveraged the structures that you see on the right, the product certifications and LCA guidance, so that we are not trying to invent new ways of doing these calculations, but rather referencing and taking advantage of the existing PCRs and EPDs that are already used in practice today.

The next step for us is taking this framework and operationalizing it in the form of a digital registry, and so we are now working on a registry rule book to actually translate the principles in the framework to effectively binary decisions and zeros and ones that will be captured in a registry system.

And with that, I’m going to transition from book and claim as a solution to accelerate decarbonization in this sector to SCoBA, or the Sustainable Concrete Buyers Alliance, which is really an attempt to actually put these systems into practice. So SCoBA is a set of downstream users of cement and concrete that have material volumes of cement and concrete in their Scope 3 inventory and are trying to address the embodied carbon from those materials. They have generally made major public commitments to decarbonize over a defined time period, and they are actually trying to go out and make the purchases of low-carbon materials that are necessary to meet those commitments.

The way SCoBA operates is it will actually engage multiple buyers that are looking to procure attributes associated with low-emission cement production and aggregate their demand to bring it to market together. What that means is these buyers will engage over a long process to align on a common set of procurement criteria, a common procurement timeline, and a common evaluation structure before SCoBA releases a request for proposals on those buyers’ behalf.

And this is really where the folks on this call will come in. We are looking for you all to submit bids in response to that request for proposal to provide low-emission cement environmental attribute certificates in line with what is laid out in this RFP. Our hope is we will get a large number of those bids and submissions, and we will evaluate those using the procurement criteria laid out in the RFP and a predetermined framework to select a small number of projects, generally one to two, that meets the buyer’s demand. And this allows that demand to actually flow to a project to help move it forward FID or to commercial success, to ensure that demand does not fragment out in the market such that none of the supply side projects actually have enough demand to move forward and be successful here.

I will also note that the intent here is to get to firm offtake that is contracted in hard, firm terms that the buyers will eventually sign. SCoBA will not take possession of the EACs. It will run this process and ultimately lead to a bilateral transaction between SCoBA members and the selected supplier. But the intent here is really to get to firm contracts that give revenue certainty to suppliers and producers of low-emissions materials.

If we go to the next page, I think it’s important to recognize that this is a novel concept. And any time you are doing something new, it’s important to touch on analogs. What I want to highlight on this page is both GMA and RMI have applied this model with quite meaningful success in a number of sectors. So you will see here that this same buyer’s alliance and demand aggregation model through EACs has been applied to aviation, to trucking, to maritime, and to steel. And across these markets, we have seen meaningful uptake of these EACs and resulting projects that have come online and/or been successful as a result.

And so I’ll take the example of aviation quickly, which is the buyer’s alliance that has run for the longest period of time at this point. We have really seen that move from an initial proof of concept that you could transact on environmental attribute certificates to solve some of the challenges that I described earlier to a scaled system where 50 million gallons of SAF have been mobilized through the buyer’s alliance system and these environmental attribute certificates. And we’ve seen over 200 million in private investment, and that number is growing with an additional RFP live at the moment.

We are seeing this model work in a number of sectors, both transportation, which you see well represented here, but really expanding into materials as well. And we think that as you look at cement and concrete as a sector, the unique challenges here lend themselves to EAC commercialization so effectively that we are very excited to take this model to this sector and try to bridge some of the challenges in a long, complex value chain with players in the middle that are often very squeezed, buying on a project basis. By moving to this model, we think we can mobilize the large blocks of demand that are going to be needed to actually move real projects at scale forward and to do so with multi-year commitments in place.

And so with that context, I want to shift and hand over to my colleague, Joan, who is going to take us through the actual RFP process here and walk through what would be entailed for a producer that is submitting a bid to this RFP.

JOAN GIBBONS:
Awesome. Thank you, Andrew. And just a reminder, I think I see people starting to use the Q&A function, but please feel free to drop any questions that arise during this presentation into the Q&A function within Zoom, and we’ll get to questions at the end.

So to provide more context on the process, we have outlined the various stages in the procurement cycle. There is an intentionally designed staged RFP process where we start with broad engagement through a request for information. For this RFP cycle, this actually happened last fall in October, where we got a great amount of responses and really good indication of excitement and engagement from suppliers in this space.

From there, we intentionally shrink down and ultimately, as Andrew mentioned, end up with a couple, a very small number of very high-quality contract-ready outcomes, and shift through moving through the RFP submission phase, which is we’re right in between the two right now, where we are receiving binding proposals to supply low emissions cement environmental attribute certificates.

After the submission phase, we’ll move into review and shortlist selection, where the organizing team here will be evaluating all of the proposals received, and identifying a shortlist based on our predetermined criteria.

Then we shift into selecting a finalist, which is usually typically one or two finalists will be selected. And those proposals and producers will then move into a contracting phase with SCoBA members.

We do have a bit of a pre-contracting phase and where we try to align on some key contracting terms and establish a template contract that helps support a more smooth contracting process with each SCoBA member. But from there, producers will move into bilateral contracts directly with the purchasing SCoBA members. So the contracts will be directly between producers and SCoBA member companies. And from there, we move into the procurement and implementation phase, where once contracts are signed, EACs begin to be delivered based on the delivery schedule that’s agreed upon during the contracting phase. And we shift into ongoing tracking, verification, and registration of EACs on a registry. So that’s the whole procurement cycle mapped out into the various different stages.

And as we shift to the next slide, we’ll look at those stages spread out over the next year. So the important dates to remember for now are that we are requesting any sort of questions or written clarifications, by the 20th. So April 20th of this month, that’s Monday of next week. We’re requesting any written questions. So feel free to send those in to the email address that’s listed in the RFP materials. We’re also happy to submit questions today, and we’ll get to as many as we can. We will be listing all responses to all questions asked on the GMA website, and so those will be available for reference by everyone, to make sure that there is consistent and easy access to information that is provided.

The next key date to keep in mind is the letter of intent deadline. So we are asking the suppliers that are intending to submit to submit a letter of intent by May 1st. Again, it’s helpful to understand who is intending on submitting, and we’re happy to answer any questions about the letter of intent or deadlines as well during the written clarification period.

From there, in June, the response deadline for RFP responses is June 19th currently. So that’s another key date to keep in mind.

From there, we haven’t put exact deadlines for the shortlisting phase or finalist selection. But those we intend to occur during the months of August and September, and then we’ll shift into the pre-contracting and contracting phases.

I’ll note dates beyond July 1st right now are tentative and subject to change, but we will make sure to keep all respondents and producers engaged and updated as we progress through these different stages. So we do intend to have firm deadlines for stages into the future.

The next slide, we get into how producers can engage with SCoBA. We get some of these questions all the time as we’re launching this effort as a new buyers alliance of how producers can stay engaged and interact with SCoBA. And so the primary way that we engage with producers and suppliers is through the request for information and request for proposals. So as I said in the other slide, the first stage to our procurement cycle is typically setting out that request for information, where we’re trying to understand the market, and really get a good idea of the potential supply and potential opportunities for engagement through the RFP. And then down the road following that, once we align on the specific RFP criteria and target with our SCoBA members, we will then release the request for proposal, which is the phase we’re in now.

So really, the SCoBA members and organizers will define the emissions goals, quantities, contract length, all of the specific criteria for EAC procurement ahead of releasing the RFP. But all of that is informed by the RFI.

I will flag, we do have right now, based on our cement and concrete booking claim framework, the eligible producers or world of producers that we’re targeting are specifically clinker, cement, concrete, and SCM producers in partnership right now with cement or concrete players. So I will flag that as of right now, asphalt products, admixture and additive producers, and steel and rebar producers are some example of folks that are not within the scope or realm of SCoBA procurement as of today.
SCoBA members range, as Andrew mentioned, in company size and type, but generally is inclusive of companies that have concrete exposure in their scope 3 emissions. We do see a lot of folks that are involved in the data center or hyperscaler world, but also more traditional developers and owners that range from a variety of industries, from commercial, residential, and infrastructure, and industrial buildings. So really, we’re focused on matching up any sort of organization that is looking to mitigate the concrete emissions within their scope 3, with producers that are interested in providing EACs and looking for investment in low emissions technologies and investments.

With that, I will flag too, as I mentioned, in relation to the clarification deadline, if you have any questions about whether your product or if you are a producer that fits that definition of in-scope, feel free to submit a written question during the clarification period. That is exactly what it’s for.

And with that, we will move on to the specific eligibility criteria for this RFP. So for the 2026 RFP, we have set specific eligibility criteria to define the scope of the products that SCoBA members are looking to procure. I’ll flag that this is a step more specific than the framework requirements. So I would definitely encourage producers to reference the book and claim framework for any information on specifically how to evaluate your product or how the book and claim system works. The SCoBA procurement is directly built off of the book and claim framework, but we have defined slightly more specific criteria in order to create a more targeted demand signal for this RFP.

So starting off– and I will also mention too at the top here that more information on these criteria can be found in the RFP documentation. So would definitely recommend taking a read through that before submitting more questions.

Kicking off with the specific criteria for this RFP, the emissions threshold is GCCA Band B rating or better. As you can see on the right-hand side, we have the the rating and eligibility system is leveraging the GCCA low carbon cement rating definition. So we are targeting that Band B, which is slightly more ambitious than the framework eligibility threshold of Band C.

For timing, SCoBA members are looking for EAC delivery in 2027 or 2028, and so we define that requirement as year one, first EAC delivery by December 31st of 2028 at the latest.

As has been mentioned, we are targeting cement products for this RFP, specifically. And really, the choice around that was intended to both send a more specific demand signal and make sure that we’re narrowing some of the scope for this specific RFP. But we also found a lot, and it aligns with both the majority of emissions associated with cement and concrete products, as well as we did see a lot of engagement from cement producers during our RFI phase.

This is the first RFP for SCoBA. There is a definite possibility that other RFPs in the future, we do plan on running several RFPs on a fairly regular cadence. Maybe focused on different products or different technologies, or different points in the cement and concrete value chain, but this RFP is going to be focused on cement products.

I will flag that this is inclusive of blended cement products, and so for eligible producers, there’s both a pathway for traditional cement producers, more innovative cement producers, but more generally also SCM producers that are working in partnership with a cement producer for a blended cement product are welcome to submit as the lead respondent for that partnership. But the product does need to meet the eligibility requirements for a cement functional unit, as outlined in the booking plan framework. We’re happy to answer more questions on that too.

We have another requirement criteria for catalytic impact. We’re focused on primary interventions that are not fossil dependent or based, and primary intervention is meant to be the primary decarbonization lever for that product. We have required EACs to represent emissions benefits that exceed regulatory compliance obligations. More information on regulatory compliance and how we’re evaluating that can both be read in the RFP documentation as well as the AIM Standard and Guidance that just came out yesterday.

And for certification, in addition to providing a third-party verified type 3 product specific EPD for verifying the emissions of the product, we are also going to ask some questions around non-greenhouse gas related criteria, and asking about the relevant social and environmental safeguards for the product.

So those are the base criteria. If there are questions, like I mentioned, we’re happy to respond to those during the Q&A section. And next we’ll move on to how submissions will be evaluated.

So as Andrew mentioned, we will be evaluating submissions both across price, but also a range of criteria that are intended to make sure that we are evaluating the broader impact of the product, both at a product emissions impact level, but also taking a bit of a systems impact view.

And so we are going to be approaching it with a least cost, best fit approach, both making sure that responses meet the minimum requirements that I just touched on in the slide before, but also taking a more holistic view and evaluating based on some of the criteria that we’ve included here.

So looking at volume impact, we do have a minimum meets or exceed 35,000 metric tons of CO₂e abated annually target. That is one way of looking at a volume requirement. We are also able to convert into tons of cement. But really looking at that CO₂e abated is the way in which a lot of our members are looking at their procurement and looking for abating their concrete emissions exposure.

We’ll be looking at sustainability and value. Both whether the product meets the GCCA Band B rating, but also looking at, like I mentioned, the innovation and system-level impact that that product might have.

And then also delivery certainty. We are very focused on making sure that these offtake commitments can help support producers in investing in low emissions technology and making those updates. But we are very also focused on making sure that we can work with producers that will deliver EACs on the contract timelines. So risk is definitely a part of our evaluation.
From there, we’ll develop a shortlist, in partnership with the criteria outlined and agreed upon by the SCoBA members. And then from there, we’ll move on to the finalist selection.

Our next slide provides a little bit more context on what those final stages might look like for producers and suppliers that are engaged in this process. And so, as I mentioned, we will holistically review all of the proposals against the criteria, develop that shortlist of producers, and then re-engage with those producers in order to ask any sort of follow-up questions, invite them to refine proposals or provide a best and final, and engage to better align with SCoBA member preferences that we have talked about at the beginning of this process, but also sometimes emerge throughout the procurement process.

From there, we’ll be selecting one or more producers as the winner of the RFP, who will then move forward into contracting bilaterally with each purchasing SCoBA member. From there, they can expect a formal notification of selection, and then potential public engagement. We typically like to make sure that the producers that are selected have the benefit of being recognized publicly. And a lot of the SCoBA members that we are working with are seen as leaders in the space, and so there is typically alignment on communication and announcement approach.

And then from there, producers will begin contracting directly with the interested SCoBA members. And typically, as I mentioned, we’ll start with a pre-negotiated SCoBA template contract to help facilitate the process. But the parties will individually finalize specific pricing and volume commitments, delivery timelines, milestones, and any other key commercial details.

Agreements are executed as firm multi-year offtake contracts for this RFP. That’s what we’re expecting and targeting. So those are intended to be, as Andrew laid out at the beginning, supportive of providing producers with the necessary revenue certainty and offtake certainty for the EDCs to support either a significant commercial scale-up, or that final investment decision for a new production facility or retrofit.

So I went through those rather quickly, but the intent was to hope that we have enough time for Q&A at the end. Before we get to Q&A, I’m going to pass it off to my colleague, Monet, who’s going to walk through more of the specifics of the submission process.

MONET KUNZ:
Awesome. Thanks so much, Joan. So on the next slide, we’ll talk through a little bit of the logistics of how you get to the RFP materials, and then fill out and submit the materials for submission.

So first, you’ll navigate to the GMA website. There’ll be a link that’ll be sent out. But there’s also a banner across the website to find the RFP documents. You’ll be prompted to submit your name and organization and email, which you’ll then receive a link to download the RFP materials. And you’ll see two main documents. One is the introduction materials. Recommend you start there, read through that. And the second one is the actual RFP submission document, which will be an Excel template.

Next slide, please. So as you look at the documents, the Excel template is really going to outline all the instructions and specific information that the SCoBA organizers are seeking as part of this RFP process. And you will see that the data will be entered into different cell shades. The light gray cells are the required inputs, and the light blue cells are the optional inputs. So if there’s additional qualifying information you would like to submit, or if you would like to reference a supplementary material document name, that’s where you would put that information. And then the light pink cells would be the example values. Please note to not move, add, modify, delete cells in this document, as that will disqualify your participation from the process.

And the next two slides will take a closer look at the Excel document before finishing out the process for submission. So on this page, you’ll see a quick overview of what the Excel file looks like. There’s multiple tabs. The first three tabs, Cover Page, Binding Terms, and Instructions, don’t require any input from suppliers for submission, but just provide some additional context information and instructions for filling out the RFP.

You’ll also see five more tabs that do require submissions and responses from the RFP respondents. You’ll have the Respondent Information page, which is general information about your company and the services that you all provide, the Volumes and Pricing tab, which is really where we’re getting the bid volume pricing and price premium methodologies and other relevant price and volume details. There’s also an optional price conversion tool that we will dive into a little bit more to help you navigate from tons of cement to tons of CO₂. And then there’s also the Sustainability and Facility Information tabs that have a few other required inputs.

So, on the next slide, we’ll look a little bit closer at this price conversion page. So, the reason for this is because pricing is expected to be submitted both on a per ton of cement and per ton of CO₂ basis. This essentially allows us to align our buyer demand, which is typically evaluated in tons of CO₂ equivalents, with the contracting that will occur on a per ton of cement basis. So, in this example, you’ll see four inputs in those gray boxes. That’s where suppliers will input their information. The calculations will happen, and then auto outputs will be applied in the sort of orange salmon-colored cells below.

It’s important to note that the EAC pricing is the intended green premium of the price to produce the product, and then the cement GWP emissions factor and the baseline emissions factor can be found on your EPD and on the emissions factor baseline methodology that is outlined in section seven of the Book and Claim Framework for Cement and Concrete.
So, as we move to the next slide, once you have filled out the Excel template and collected any supplemental materials that you want, you’ll then move to the Submissions portal, where you’ll fill out this first page on identifying information and making sure that all the required information is filled in.

Then on the next slide, you will collect all of your files. And note that a total of three files can be submitted. So, the first file will be that Excel submission document, and then any supplemental materials like your EPDs or supporting documentation can be uploaded in the following sections. It is important to note that if you have more than a total of three files, you’ll want to compress those into a zip file to upload in those sections. And any additional information that you can provide can support your response in this submission process.

And then finally, on the last slide, when you’re ready to submit your documents, you will see these three boxes. Again, that first one is for your submission document, the Excel file, and then the supplementary materials in the following boxes. Once you hit Submit, you’ll receive a confirmation from info@buildscoba.org, and then you’ll be done at that point. If you would like to revise your submission, let us know at that same email address, but on the June 19th deadline, we will consider all submissions final and not accept any further revisions at that time.

So, just a quick look at the submission process for this RFP, but I think we will now move into the Q&A to answer your questions, and I will pass it over to Ben to moderate those questions.

BEN SKINNER:
Thank you, Monet, and thank you everyone who has attended today. We’ve gotten a bunch of questions in the Zoom function, and so thank you for that. We’re going to do our best here to work through all of them. I’ll note as well that we’ll be putting out a more public Q&A document. So, if we don’t get to your question, hopefully we’ll be able to answer everything. And then, of course, you can also reach out if you have additional questions.

The first question we have here is around the book and claim framework itself, and it is: How are we ensuring that these benefits aren’t being double-booked? As it was mentioned at the top of this presentation, the SCoBA RFP does fit in more broadly to the book and claim ecosystem and builds off of the Book and Claim Framework that we built out, which does have strict rules and guidance around double counting. And I’d love to pass it to Chandler or Joan to maybe give a little bit more insights around how we’re thinking about double counting, and in addition to that, how physical off-takers are still incentivized within this system.

CHANDLER RANDOL:
Yeah, really good questions here, and happy to kick us off. And Joan, please feel free to jump in with anything as well.

On double booking and double counting in particular, there are a couple of factors within the framework that minimize the risk of erroneous double counting. One is by having a registry itself. So, having the registry where we can physically track where the issuance, transfer, and retirement of the EAC goes is a great tool to identify that the only party that should be claiming those reductions are verified.

The other component, and this is one that is pretty specific to cement and concrete, rather than just a registry to solve these problems, is that we’re relying very heavily on EPDs. And EPDs are great. We want to incentivize EPDs. They also introduce some double counting risk, and we acknowledge that.

The section eight of the framework does go into some of the ways that we’re minimizing this risk, but essentially, how we’re suggesting to minimize this risk is a producer is required to disclose to the physical recipient that an EAC has been sold associated with this EPD and require some form of disclosure of that, whether it’s a EPD cover letter or in the notes section and within that, also produce an alternative baseline that the physical recipient should be using to use in their inventory and product level accounting, rather than using the GWP values from the EPD itself.

The second question was on incentivizing the physical off-takers to actually use these materials in general, and this is a really great question. And one mechanism for that is while quantitative claims, so those emission-related claims, those are strictly forbidden, but what a physical recipient could do is they could make qualitative claims about the products that they’re using. These ultimately would be negotiated between the producer and the physical recipient themselves to negotiate the bounds of the types of claims that could be made, or types of qualitative claims that could be made.

But some examples of what this could look like are using a innovative product or using a novel product. They could even use the brand of the product. What would not be permissible under these qualitative claims, though, are things like saying, “We used a low-carbon product,” or, “a green product.” Those would probably err on the side of an erroneous claim because the greenness of that product has been sold with the attribute.

So I’ll pause there, and Joan, do you have anything else to add to either of these?

JOAN GIBBONS:
No, I think you did a great job, Chandler, explaining. And I would say there’s just, I think in engaging with this system, we’re introducing more communication within the value chain about the nature of the product, the fact that EACs have been sold. And so really that’s supposed to start with that bilateral contract between the EAC producer and low emissions material producer and the EAC buyer. Terms are expected to be worked out around claiming, around use of the physical product or claims by the user of the physical product, and then flow down from there. So we are asking for an additional level of transparency and documentation, and communication as that product moves through the value chain. And Ben, we’ll hand it back to you.

BEN SKINNER:
Thank you both. We’ve got a couple of questions about registries and the broader ecosystem here, and so going to combine a few into one. Would love Chandler, or perhaps Andrew as well, to jump in and describe a little bit more about how this system interacts with registries, how does a registry rule book fit in, and what are we doing given that there aren’t any registries in existence right now?

CHANDLER RANDOL:
Yeah, this is great. Andrew, I’m happy to start and then would love for any thoughts that you have.

I think on the registry, the Framework provides high level guidance on how to design a book and claim and operate a book and claim, but it doesn’t provide the level of detail that’s necessary to actually talk about how we’re tracking these EACs on a registry, which is a really critical component. I would point to other sectors that have registries and registry rule books as really good examples. One that comes to mind is the SAFc registry.

And I think what you’ll notice between the document that we have and ultimately that registry rule book is there’s just another level of detail of how specifically you transfer an EAC to a different user within the system, and then how it’s actually retired. And I think that’s the biggest gap right now.

But at a high level, the principles for what are needed in the system are covered in the framework. Andrew, any additional thoughts to that?

ANDREW ALCORTA:
No, I think you’ve covered it well, Chandler. So I’ll just briefly say, part of this process is as you are standing up a registry, ensuring that you have the right structures in place, the right technical partners to actually implement this. And so we are continuing down the path of writing that registry rule book to ensure that the detail and the clarity translating from the framework to effectively a software program developer is all there, and that’s what Chandler was referring to. We are also in the process of going out and engaging with potential partners to try to figure out what that long-term solution should be.

At the same time, we want to ensure that we are not slowing down the commercial process in these markets, and so we are moving forward at pace with this first RFP and procurement. And there is a long history in these markets of finding interim solutions while that long-term technical infrastructure is built.

BEN SKINNER:
Thank you. Moving into a question around contracting. This one will be for Joan and Andrew. What is meant by binding proposals?

JOAN GIBBONS:
I can start, and Andrew, feel free to add in. I think binding proposals is meant to indicate that we are expecting a firm proposal that can be contracted upon. And so the intent is that producers are evaluating the RFP criteria, and submitting a proposal that they are expecting to be able to be used for contracting, and that is representative of a firm proposal.

So the intent is that those prices, the timelines, the delivery terms, could be directly used in a contract as is, as submitted, by a buyer. As we’ve outlined, there typically is a process within shortlisting where we are talking through terms. There may be a potential for updating down the road, but we want producers to submit a firm proposal upfront.

And Andrew, we’re happy to have you add anything there too.

ANDREW ALCORTA:
I think you covered the proposal side well. Effectively, the price and volume cannot change materially because we’re going to run the evaluation process on that. And I think you covered the finer points there.

The one additional piece that I may just highlight, and I don’t know if the question was intended to address this, but I think there’s also a question here around, how should we think about the firmness of contracting and the offtake that results from this process? And what I would note there is, historically, what we have seen in these contracts is an agreement between the parties where buyers are contractually bound to buy a particular volume of EACs on a particular timeline at a particular price.

Now, the only contingency here is the production of those EACs, which is contingent on the production of the low-carbon product. But generally speaking, the way that we have structured these in other sectors is if the producer actually produces the low-carbon product that they have said they would in this RFP, if they issue the EACs as they say they would through the registry, they will get paid, and we are providing that revenue assurance effectively, through this process. And the backstop here is having a contract, right, and having all of the protections that you would normally have from a firm contract in place.

So I don’t know if the question was intended for the offtake side, but that’s the other piece that we are really trying to firm through this process that I at least wanted to touch on.

BEN SKINNER:
Thanks, Andrew. We’re going to shift into a couple of questions around eligibility for the RFP. The first one is for SCM companies, SCM producers, can they partner with a cement company to put forward a joint submission as a cement blend, and how should they reflect this in a letter of intent?

I’ll start off by answering that. Yes, we are absolutely wanting to see blended cements be submitted here, and that a partnership between an SCM company and a cement producer who would actually book that attribute for a blended cement is encouraged.

We also are thinking more about SCMs more broadly, and so I’ll pass it to Andrew and Chandler to give a little bit more information around how we’re thinking about incorporating SCMs in the future.

ANDREW ALCORTA:
I’m happy to start here, and Chandler, if you have anything to add, please do. I will note, as a separate track of work from this RFP, we are investigating the possibility of a direct EAC issuance from SCM producers. That is still very much in the exploratory phase. So we are going out, we’re having conversations about how that could work, what methodologies or certifications you would rely on in order to do that, how technically it would be reflected on an EAC, and ultimately, from that, trying to evaluate what both the benefits and risks of that system structure versus what was described in the question and I think in Ben’s response here, where SCM producers are partnering with cement producers, how to think about the relative trade-offs there.

So, we are undertaking that work separately because we have not come to a resolution on that question yet. And that will have to go through our governance process formally at some point. We, again, did not want to slow down the commercialization process, did not want to hold the RFP on resolution of that. And so this RFP is moving forward based solely on what is in the framework, which would require an SCM producer to partner with a cement producer.

BEN SKINNER:
Thanks, Andrew. And Joan, do you want to put maybe a finer point on the letter of intent component?

JOAN GIBBONS:
Yeah. So we would expect just a letter of intent from the primary respondent. So that could be the SCM producer in this case. But any additional information on the partnership, or information on how the plan is for booking EACs and having access to the information for that, would be appreciated. We expect that we can also continue the conversation during the review process, if there are additional questions on the partnership.

BEN SKINNER:
Thank you. We’ll stick with Joan and Andrew here to answer another RFP eligibility question. There’s been a few questions around fossil-based SCMs and subsequent blended cements and their eligibility in the system. In addition to that, if they’re reclaimed, beneficiated, or mineralized, how does that fit in here?

JOAN GIBBONS:
Thanks, Ben. So I think there is a component in the framework or a note in the framework that outlines the framework’s approach to thinking about fossil-based materials that are reclaimed or beneficiated or mineralized, activated, more broadly in general.

For this RFP, we have taken a slightly different approach in outlining a criteria that says that the primary decarbonization lever should not be fossil-based, or a material that is a byproduct of fossil fuel processes. And so that is taking it a step further, in that what we are looking for is the primary mechanism for reducing the emissions intensity of the product is not a material that is associated with a fossil process. So it does include materials that might be reclaimed or beneficiated, as the primary decarbonization lever.

ANDREW ALCORTA:
I think well said, Joan. I don’t have anything to add on the technical side of this. I will just flag that, in extended consultations with the buyers that make up the SCoBA members, a desire to identify solutions that are really going to drive deep decarbonization and be applicable well into the future after you see some of these fossil byproducts decrease over time, was a core element of what they were solving for. And so that is really the intent behind this, is how do we find those technologies that can drive forward and be applied well into the future, recognizing that application of fossil-based materials into blended cements or as SCMs is happening today, there is real benefit to that. We expect that to continue and think that is a great way to reduce the carbon intensity of cement and concrete today. But really the buyers here wanted to find how can we catalyze the next innovation to make this sector more sustainable.

BEN SKINNER:
Then another question, or two questions here on eligibility. Is the RFP targeting a specific geography in terms of EAC generation or where the physical product is being delivered? And is there any sort of differentiation between under construction plants and operational plants?

JOAN GIBBONS:
Yeah, I can take that one first. So we are open to anywhere on the globe for geography. There isn’t any sort of specific geography requirement. So open to any submissions from that aspect.

On the under construction versus operational facilities, part of the submission template does have a facility information tab, and there are different sections to fill out based on where the stage that the facility that is being submitted is in. So we do have a few different questions for facilities that are under construction or pre-FID in order to, again, assess that delivery risk. There’s a couple of questions for operational facilities as well, but since the RFP is open to facilities that are in any stage, there’s a few different sections there.

I will flag that if you are potentially submitting different proposals for multiple different facilities, or if there are multiple facility options that you might be submitting for, we would ask that you are submitting a different facility tab for each facility. So that might look like create saving down another version of the submission template and filling it out separately for each facility that you’re submitting in order to provide the right information for that facility tab on operational status and delivery.

BEN SKINNER:
Thank you, Joan. Unfortunately, we are just about at time here, so we’re going to transition into next steps. If we didn’t answer your question, we’ll aim to follow up. And of course, we encourage you all to submit any additional questions that you may have by April 20th.

The final RFP bids, again, are going to be due on June 19th. We do encourage folks, if you have any outstanding questions or are confused about the process, our email is here. It’s info@buildscoba.org, so feel free to reach out. Thank you everyone who is interested in helping to support this process. Again, we appreciate your participation and are looking forward to working together in the future. Thank you all.