Comparison of type III environmental product declarations for construction products: Material sourcing and harmonization evaluation

Gelowitz, M.D.C.; McArthur, J.J.

doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2017.04.133

Cited by 64 publications

(41 citation statements)

References 13 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Nevertheless, ISO 14040, ISO 14044 and ISO 14025 leave space for important methodological choices during the LCA study and the development of an EPD. Therefore, even ISO 14025 compliant EPDs may be not comparable, as shown by several studies (Gelowitz and McArthur, 2017;Subramanian et al, 2012). Thus, besides these ISO standards, standardisation activities were developed specifically for construction products both by ISO and by the European Committee for standardisation (CEN), Technical Commission 350 (CEN/TC 350, 2001), on Sustainability of construction works, to better specify the requirements of EPDs for construction products, namely, in the business to business format:…”

Section: Communication Of Environmental Related Information In the Comentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessment and communication of the environmental performance of construction products in Europe: Comparison between PEF and EN 15804 compliant EPD schemes

Durão

Silvestre

Mateus

et al. 2020

Resources, Conservation and Recycling

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Section: Communication Of Environmental Related Information In the Comentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessment and communication of the environmental performance of construction products in Europe: Comparison between PEF and EN 15804 compliant EPD schemes

Durão

Silvestre

Mateus

et al. 2020

Resources, Conservation and Recycling

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…( AIA 2010)Some users distrust the validity of EPDs due to their limited transparency (Hunsager et al 2014). They are also costly to produce (Ibáñez-Forés et al 2016;Gelowitz & McArthur 2017). It is also important to note that PCR development is not well-regulated.…”

Section: Barriers To Effective Comparisonsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Embodied carbon in construction materials: a framework for quantifying data quality in EPDs

Waldman¹,

Huang

Simonen

2020

Buildings and Cities

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Embodied carbon constitutes a significant portion of a building's greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and is a key challenge for the construction and real estate sectors. Embodied carbon includes construction product manufacturing, building construction, material replacement and end of life. During the specification and procurement stage, designers and contractors have the opportunity to prioritize products with lower carbon footprints. Environmental product declarations (EPDs) are a growing source of environmental data in the construction products market, and are increasingly being used for (1) environmental performance assessment of buildings and (2) product comparison for procurement decisions during the later stages of building design. An obstacle to identifying and purchasing lower embodied carbon products is a lack of data quality and the transparency of EPDs. However, EPDs vary widely in their data quality and specificity, which can lead to inaccurate and misleading comparisons. A new method is presented to account quantitatively for estimates of variation in underlying data specificity in EPDs to enable fairer comparisons between EPDs and to motivate the reporting of actual variability and uncertainty in EPDs. The application of this approach can help purchasers to assess EPDs quantitatively. Practice relevance Life-cycle assessments (LCAs) and LCA data can be used within the construction sector to evaluate buildings and to assist in design, specification and procurement decision-making. A new method is presented to support the assessment of comparability of functionally equivalent materials and products during the specification and procurement stage. Given the known variation and lack of precision within EPDs, this method provides quantitative metrics that correlate to a qualitative interpretation of EPD precision. This method can be used by anyone who is using EPD data to make product comparisons at the specification and procurement stage: • It provides more confidence in choosing low-carbon material or product options when comparing between functionally equivalent options. • It can incentivize product manufacturers and LCA practitioners to improve data quality and transparently report known variation in their EPDs. • It may also motivate manufacturers to reduce GHGs from their products and processes.

show abstract

“…The interviewees also reported a lack of consideration of the physical behaviour of heritage buildings and of the vapour permeability of historical material and an inaccuracy of Energy Performance Certificates (EPC) that make assumptions about energy use but do not reflect the actual performance of historical buildings. Incomplete Environmental Product Declarations (EPD) can also contribute to this issue [62], and, consistent with this, Cassar [51] stressed that some sustainability certification tools do not use a holistic approach; they are based on relative energy targets and they exclude social and economic sustainability aspects. In addition, Webb [43] emphasised the lack of consideration of embodied energy during the retrofitting of historical buildings, stressing the need for improved simulation tools and software to reduce the gap between simulations data and real building performance.…”

Section: Materials Procurement and Sustainability Certificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mitigating Climate Change in the Cultural Built Heritage Sector

Sesana

Bertolin

Gagnon

et al. 2019

Climate

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Climate change mitigation targets have put pressure to reduce the carbon footprint of cultural heritage buildings. Commonly adopted measures to decrease the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of historical buildings are targeted at improving their energy efficiency through insulating the building envelope, and upgrading their heating, cooling and lighting systems. However, there are complex issues that arise when mitigating climate change in the cultural built heritage sector. For instance, preserving the authenticity of heritage buildings, maintaining their traditional passive behaviours, and choosing adaptive solutions compatible with the characteristics of heritage materials to avoid an acceleration of decay processes. It is thus important to understand what the enablers, or the barriers, are to reduce the carbon footprint of cultural heritage buildings to meet climate change mitigation targets. This paper investigates how climate change mitigation is considered in the management and preservation of the built heritage through semi-structured interviews with cultural heritage experts from the UK, Italy and Norway. Best-practice approaches for the refurbishment of historical buildings with the aim of decreasing their energy consumption are presented, as perceived by the interviewees, as well as the identification of the enablers and barriers in mitigating climate change in the cultural built heritage sector. The findings emphasise that adapting the cultural built heritage to reduce GHG emissions is challenging, but possible if strong and concerted action involving research and government can be undertaken to overcome the barriers identified in this paper.

show abstract

Comparison of type III environmental product declarations for construction products: Material sourcing and harmonization evaluation

Cited by 64 publications

References 13 publications

Assessment and communication of the environmental performance of construction products in Europe: Comparison between PEF and EN 15804 compliant EPD schemes

Assessment and communication of the environmental performance of construction products in Europe: Comparison between PEF and EN 15804 compliant EPD schemes

Embodied carbon in construction materials: a framework for quantifying data quality in EPDs

Mitigating Climate Change in the Cultural Built Heritage Sector

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About