Even though Environmental Product Declarations have been around since the end of the 20th century, many of today’s EPDs rely on industry averages. With the industry’s commitment to sustainability and the rise in building certifications such as LEED, some building product companies are striving to create product-specific EPDs so architects and other sustainability decision-makers can better understand the exact carbon impact of their product selections.

What’s the real issue with the average numbers used in EPDs?

Much of the reported data found in EPDs is based on industry averages or company averages, not precise figures from suppliers, factories, and product companies. It’s better than nothing, but it’s still lacking.

“It gives you a very basic benchmark,” says Brent Trenga, director of sustainability for Kingspan Panels North America. “If you are really concerned about getting accurate data, then granular data can be used to make a better decision.”

EPDs are often compared to nutrition labels, although they aren’t as detailed. Trenga says that if food manufacturing companies created nutrition labels in the same manner as today’s EPDs, they would simply be able to report the average calories and nutrients across an entire product line, so eaters wouldn’t be able to accurately track their individual calories consumed or sugar intake, for instance. In this same manner, industry professionals aren’t able to properly calculate the number of kilograms of CO₂ per square foot or Global Warming Potential (GWP) from many of the EPDs used today.

“We would love to see EPDs institute a coordinated system of evaluation at a macro level, in addition to granular supporting information, as a way to make more equitable comparisons for designers and clients to quickly analyze selections,” says Cameo Roehrich, AIA, associate principal. “Beyond individual product selections, EPDs are an essential building block for whole building life cycle analysis,” says Katherine Luxner, AIA, associate of the international practice Studios Architecture.

Why isn’t granular data reported in all EPDs?

It might be easy to proclaim building product manufacturers aren’t investing their time or resources in to completing more detailed paperwork, or they’re haphazardly filling out product declarations with average numbers; but that’s not the entire story. Every product maker must rely on detailed numbers provided from their suppliers.

“We went to our steel suppliers and got the life cycle assessment data from the mill,” Trenga says. “Because we now have grid-specific electricity, I can give you the exact carbon intensity of a two and one-half, three-, or four-inch panel that came out of a specific factory.”

Kingspan has set its sights on achieving net-zero carbon manufacturing by 2030 through its Planet Passionate program. This net-zero goal means data from suppliers is crucial to meeting its goal. Not every supplier has tracked and reported the data building product companies need to create more granular EPDs. It often requires that individual companies persistently request data and then spend six to nine months and thousands of dollars to create one detailed EPD.

As architects, contractors, and building product companies request more data from their sources, detailed EPDs could become widely available from a number of companies.

How do we make informed product decisions with today’s EPDs?

With the free online Tally Climate Action Tool (tallyCAT) that integrates EPDs into Revit and a growing database of 150,000 EPDs in Building Transparency’s Embodied Carbon in Construction Calculator (EC3), more than 31,000 registered users of EC3 can easily view a side-by-side comparison of a product’s GWP.

“Softwares such as Tally and EC3 utilize the information within EPDs to help designers holistically narrow in on the most impactful components to optimize environmental outcomes,” Roehrich says. “We are hopeful that tools like this will help increase the demand for EPDs and in time lead to a more unified framework being adopted for EPD data evaluation.”

The executive director of Building Transparency, Stacy Smedley, says the main short-term challenge for EPD use among architects is: “having product-specific EPDs for some key categories and broad education on when and how to use EPDs in the design and specification process.”

For more information about Kingspan’s Planet Passionate initiatives, visit kingspan.com/planetpassionate