In the spring of 2017, one California state legislator was trying to advance a significant climate bill. The Buy Clean California Act would direct the state to use its enormous purchasing power to require manufacturers to reveal how much carbon dioxide was released in the manufacture of building materials. This would help create a market for cleaner products.

But one day in May of that year, as interested parties weighed in and the language of the bill evolved, all references to concrete and cement disappeared. The bill, AB 262, sponsored by former Assemblymember Rob Bonta (D), now California’s attorney general, ultimately did become law. That meant public project managers had to start taking into account the climate impact of construction materials including glass, rebar and steel beams — but not concrete or cement, the glue that holds concrete together.

That’s a significant omission because cement is responsible for an estimated 7 to 8 percent of carbon dioxide emissions worldwide. In the United States, California is the second-largest producer of cement after Texas.

Now a paper published by the American Economic Liberties Project argues that it’s no surprise that cement was removed from California’s Buy Clean legislation. The authors say that industry players exert too much influence over government standards, thwarting innovation in the emerging ​“clean concrete” sector.

Concrete is the fundamental building material in things like highways and high-rise buildings, and the industry has rigorous performance standards to ensure safe construction. But the global firms that dominate the industry have little incentive to innovate, even though cleaner concrete options have been proven to be safe, according to the report.

“Incumbents are closely intertwined with the bodies that establish the standards and codes that largely determine which cements and concretes are used in construction projects,” the report says. It points out that state highway departments, some of the largest purchasers of concrete, at best are failing to change their procurement practices at the pace required by climate change, and at worst are actively lobbying against progress.