Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) are emerging as the centrepiece of a worldwide disruption in how buildings and roads are designed, and materials specified. In this article we explore the story of the rise of EPDs, the main drivers behind this, and how EPDs are changing and accelerating cement and concrete innovation.
According to The International EPD System an Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) is ‘An independently verified and registered document that communicates transparent and comparable information about the life-cycle environmental impact of products in a credible way.’1 Like financial statements, EPDs are audited to add credibility to the reported data and, hence, to the reported environmental performance of a product.
Principally due to this veracity, EPDs have emerged as the ‘gold standard’ for measurement of environmental performance. While EPDs measure 20 or more environmental impacts, global warming potential (GWP) of a product, more commonly known as the carbon footprint, is nearly always the single measure evaluated by users of EPDs.
Where did EPDs originate?
EPDs are quite new, just 16 years old. They are based on ISO 14025, Environmental labels and declarations — Type III environmental declarations — Principles and procedures, first published in 2006. This standard provides basic guidelines for producing EPDs from a life cycle assessment (LCA). So, what has caused the rise to prominence of this young teenage phenomenon?
Increasing recognition of the threat of climate change is the overriding factor, but secondary, more immediate, influences are responsible for the current sense of urgency. These immediate influences come from the financial markets, government ‘buy clean’ policies that require EPDs for construction, and from global developers, such as Amazon and Microsoft, which require EPDs to be used in their global projects.
These factors are playing out in different ways and at different paces in Europe, the Americas and Asia. However, the global result is sustained focus on sustainability and the use of EPDs to measure reductions in GWP.
Financial markets are a major force
The largest money manager in the world, BlackRock, oversees US$10tn in assets, and has made it clear that it is not interested in investing in companies that do not decarbonise. In his 2022 Annual Letter to CEOs, Larry Fink the CEO of BlackRock said, “Engineers and scientists are working around the clock on how to decarbonise cement, steel, and plastics; shipping, trucking, and aviation; agriculture, energy, and construction. The decarbonising of the global economy is going to create the greatest investment opportunity of our lifetime.” He also says “Today, every car manufacturer is racing toward an electric future. The auto industry, however, is merely on the leading edge – every sector will be transformed by new, sustainable technology.”
Simply put, investor sentiment is the driving force causing every cement company to commit to be CO2 neutral by 2050, and to make the enormous research and development and capital investment required. While measuring smokestack emissions is common and mandated in many countries, these emissions’ measurements are incomplete compared to EPDs. EPDs measure all emissions, from mining the limestone to emissions from basic plant maintenance. In addition EPDs systems can calculate, ‘What if’ scenarios, such as what if I change fuels, or what if I change blends? In combination with smokestack emission measurement, EPDs provide a complete picture, the critical insights for innovation and improvement, and a trusted and concise method for reporting.
Local operations see forces for change
When managing a cement plant, or selling cement, investor pressure can seem abstract. However significant day-to-day business pressures for decarbonisation have emerged in many markets. This trend is now rapidly expanding to all markets. Unlike top down investor pressure to decarbonise, market and customer demand to buy reduced CO2 concrete and cement is immediate and can impact today’s revenue and profit.
Direct commercial demand is most visible in North America, where the more unfettered capitalism has taken hold. Many major building owners, leading architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) firms and the largest general contractors have implemented EPD programs, established specifications for EPDs and often encouraged their customers to require EPDs.
Digital tools for EPD analysis
Leading AECs are investing in software such as Building Transparency’s free, open-access tool called the Embodied Carbon in Construction Calculator (EC3).3 This is designed specifically to use digitised EPD data for purchase decision analysis. In just over two years EC3 has over 22,000 users in 70+ countries and has been utilised in over 2500 projects.
In Europe the InData network, which has 11 member countries, is working to establish an open web-based international data network structure for EPD/LCA data.4 InData has partnered with ECO platform and is adopting the ILCD+EPD Data format from ECO Platform to provide a common data format. InData currently has an EPD search engine of all major program operators in operation,5 but it does not yet have the EPD analysis tools like those available from EC3.
Global inconsistency hinders EPD growth
While the details go beyond the scope of this article, there are two standards for digital interchange and analysis of EPDs, one from ECO Platform and the other from Building Transparency. In October of 2021 the two organisations formed a partnership to collaborate on harmonisation, although results have not been announced.
In addition, two baseline standards, EN15804 (drafted and maintained by CEN, the European Committee for Standardization) and ISO 21930 in North America. Both provide guidance for developing EPDs for construction products and services. Both strive to harmonise the structure for EPDs in the construction sector, in order to improve transparency and comparability. While the two standards are merging, for example ISO 21930:2017 is now more similar to EN 15804, EN 15804 itself is also evolving, with some countries in Europe simultaneously supporting both the older 15804+A1 and the newer +A2 standards.
The challenge of evolving standards is twofold. For global producers, buyers and specifiers of construction products, the challenge is that EPDs from different regions are different and produce different results. The challenge for producers and verifiers, as well as the consumers of EPDs, is that multiple standards increase the cost of EPDs.
The future is instant, all-digital EPDs
While we live in a digital world, with expectations for instant data availability, EPDs were born in 2006 as a complex, expensive and static report developed by specialised LCA professionals. They expected that each EPD would remain unchanged for five years. This approach developed because EPDs were newly born out of the discipline of LCA. However, the prohibitive cost and static nature is anathema to rapid innovation and to regular periodic environmental reporting. In recent years we have seen digital instant EPDs emerge as the dominant form in North America for ready mix and pre-cast concrete, and now becoming available for cement in Europe.
For full disclosure, the author’s company, Climate Earth, was the first to introduce instant digital EPDs in 2013, to accelerate mix design innovation and give producers full control with the ability to generate an EPD in seconds with a few simple keystrokes. There has been resistance to automated EPDs due to concerns about quality, and the need to adopt more advanced software verification processes.
Today much of the LCA community, and verifiers, recognise that sophisticated software algorithms, combined with easy-to-use verification reports, make for a higher quality EPD than manual verification that entails in-depth review of large complex process models and multi-page spreadsheets. Of course, the appeal for users to have an EPD in hand in seconds, rather than waiting weeks for a consulting report was immediate.
Instant digital EPDs also give producers the ability to conduct ‘what if’ analyses immediately. For example, what if analysis answers questions like what if I change processes, fuels, or blends? Instant EPDs immediately demonstrate the improvements of such changes and become a critical tool for accelerating concrete mix design and cement blend and fuel innovation.
What can we conclude about EPDs?
The first clear conclusion is that EPDs are here to stay. EPDs have become the de facto measure of GWP and CO2 emissions reduction performance. The second conclusion is that it is time to turn away from the conversation about needing EPDs. Many producers still ask whether or not they need them. The real business questions are ‘When do I need to build expertise in low-CO2 products?’ and ‘When do we aggressively begin to innovate our product designs and manufacturing processes?’ Like measuring kiln temperature for cement or compressive strength for concrete, EPDs are another measurement tool for measuring performance in the rapidly-emerging market for low carbon construction.
References
1. www.environdec.com;
2. www.blackrock.com/corporate/investor-relations/larry-fink-ceo-letter;
3. www.buildingtransparency.org;
4. www.indata.network;
5. www.indata.network/data.