"The LCA sheds lights on the full environmental footprint of the INBUILT innovative products, while the LCC provides a cost perspective. This prepares the product developers for publishing EPDs, and the results include a deep dive to help them understand the main environmental ‘hotspots’ and how to reduce them. We are preparing open-access publications on novel and important aspects of the work to help INBUILT to lower the environmental footprint of construction.”
Stephen Allen, Associate Professor of LCA at the University of Bath
INBUILT has completed its report on life cycle assessment and life cycle costing of the project’s innovative building products. The findings will feed into the building level digital platform, support social life cycle assessment within the project, and enable manufacturers to evaluate and report on the environmental impact of their products.
Why it matters: reducing the environmental footprint of buildings
A core goal of the INBUILT project is to reduce the environmental footprint of buildings, which requires high quality and detailed data on the life cycle impacts of individual construction products. Furthermore, over the last decade, the publication of Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) has grown exponentially, not only for voluntary sustainability initiatives, but also in response to emerging regulatory requirements mandating the disclosure of verifiable environmental data.
But what are EPDs? These are verified and registered documents that communicate transparent and comparable information about the life-cycle environmental impact of products. They summarise the results of compliant life cycle assessments (LCAs) of products, covering the full produce cycle, from raw material extraction, production, and use phase to end-of-life management. After these are verified by an independent third party review, they are published as EPDs by the EPD Programme.
The INBUILT LCAs were produced according to EPD standards. Full compliance is challenging for products still under development, and hence a ‘compliance summary’ was produced to show how close each LCA is to being ready to publish as an EPD. This aids interpretation of the results by the European Commission, and makes it easy for INBUILT product developers to see what else (if anything) is required for them to be able to publish EPDs for their products. Scientific publications about the use of LCA in INBUILT are also in preparation.
Life Cycle Assessment and Life Cycle Costing together
In INBUILT, in addition to LCA, a simplified life cycle costing (LCC) was produced. While the LCA focuses on the environmental footprint of each product, the LCC provides a systematic economic evaluation of capital, operating and end-of-life cost of the products.
A simplified LCC methodology was applied, following internationally recognised standards and guidance. In particular, the Net Present Value (NPV) approach was used, as set out in ISO 15686-5:2008 and the European Commission’s Davis Langdon report. In all cases, a full LCA and simplified LCC reports have been produced and made available to the European Commission. INBUILT manufacturers will now use the results to report on their reduction targets established within INBUILT.
Stephen Allen, Associate Professor of LCA at the University of Bath, led the LCA and LCC task, with contributions from Donald Nwonu and Ellie Marsh (UBath, UK), Alessia Losini (CEA, France), Daniel Checa Alias (Leitat, Spain), Jacqueline Jauch (University of Stuttgart, Germany) and Marc Mingucci (Filiater, France). The LCA practitioners worked with all of the INBUILT product developers outlined here.
This article was written by Giorgio Alessandro (Greenovate! Europe), Stephen Allen (University of Bath) and Donald Chimobi Nwonu (University of Bath) for the INBUILT project.