A Primer on Building Environmental Product Declarations

The MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub has published the final piece on the proper use of Environmental Product Declarations (EPD’s) and Life Cycle Assessments.

This is a valuable resource that should be great for use in the Pacific Northwest.  This is an easy to read document that outlines the basics of what each tool does.

As noted in the document, there is a significant movement to reduce the environmental impacts associated with buildings, as manifest in the numerous green building rating standards that are available to building developers and owners.

“While the objective of creating “green buildings” is laudable, quantitative evaluations of a building’s environmental impacts must be done using a life cycle assessment (LCA). This method quantifies the impacts of resources and emissions associated with construction and operation of buildings.

It can be challenging to compare the results of building LCAs because of differences in scope and analysis methodologies. This primer is intended to clarify the scope of different LCAs, their purposes, and when they can be used for comparisons.”

As noted in research conducted by the Pacific Northwest Building Resilience Coalition, embodied energy as reflected in EPD’s are only a small part of the carbon footprint of a building.

Read the MIT document here.