What is an EPD?

A short explanation of EPDs, the standards for construction products and how they are calculated.

All building materials through their manufacture, transport, use and end of life status influence the environment and contribute to the total embodied carbon content of the construction into which it is built.

An EPD is a document that quantifies the environmental impacts of that product on a Type III environmental label.

An EPD is created by the collation of data through a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) provided by the manufacturer under Product Category Rules document (PCR) in line with EN 15804 (the European Standard for the generation of EPD for construction products), ISO 14025, and other related international standards.

EPDs should be available for all building materials used on a project, but normally only the most carbon contributing components are accounted for in whole building LCA. EPDs are independently 3rd party verified and are normally available from manufacturers or within LCA software packages such as OneClick. Once attained, they are valid for 5 years. As of July 2022, all new EPDs must be issued to EN 15804+A2.

In the Embodied Carbon Report:

“An overview of the process and calculation of embodied carbon in a study of house types” the tool used for this assessment is the Bionova One Click LCA tool, which is BRE certified & ensures each EPD included in their database is independently verified. It allows a project to conduct a building lifecycle assessment that aligns with core industry guidance.

In this report an LCA was undertaken to account for the embodied carbon content of four dwelling types to assess where improvements were required to meet the embodied carbon targets. The most contributing materials were identified and an Improved specification was proposed using materials with improved, verified EPDs including Unilin Insulation products, that help reduce the embodied carbon of each of the dwelling types.

For more information on how EPDs are used in the calculation of embodied carbon please download the report below.

Download our Embodied Carbon Report