To figure the Green Premiums on materials, you need to understand where emissions come from when we make things. I think of it in three stages: We emit greenhouse gases (1) when we use fossil fuels to generate the electricity that factories need to run their operations; (2) when we use them to generate heat needed for different manufacturing processes, like melting iron ore to make steel; and (3) when we actually make these materials, like the way cement manufacturing inevitably creates carbon dioxide.
