Five Global Warming Potential (GWP) indicators shall be declared:
GWP-GHG (equal to GWP-total except that the characterisation factor for biogenic CO2 is set to zero)
Impact assessment method: GWP100, EN 15804. Version: EF 3.1, February 2023. Original reference IPCC (2021).
Examples
1 kg carbon dioxide = 1 kg CO2 eq.
1 kg methane = 29.8 kg CO2 eq.
1 kg dinitrogen oxide = 273 kg CO2 eq.
Impact assessment method: Acidification potential (AP), accumulated exceedence, EN 15804. Version: February 2023. Original references Seppälä et al. 2006, Posch et al. 2008
Examples for unspecified emissions to air, unspecified location
1 kg ammonia = 3.02 mol H+ eq.
1 kg nitrogen oxides = 0.74 mol H+ eq.
1 kg sulphur oxides = 1.31 mol H+ eq.
Please note the use of non-baseline characterization factors for acidification potential.
Three different Eutrophication Potential (EP) indicators shall be declared:
EP, aquatic freshwater, EUTREND model, EN 15804. Version: February 2023.
Original reference
Struijs et al. 2009 as implemented in ReCiPe
Examples, emissions to fresh water
1 kg phosphorus = 1 kg P eq.
1 kg phosphate = 0.33 kg P eq.
1 kg phosporic acid = 0.32 kg P eq.
EP, aquatic marine, EUTREND model EN 15804. Version: February 2023.
Original reference
Struijs et al. 2009 as implemented in ReCiPe
Examples, unspecified emissions to air, unspecified location
1 kg nitrogen oxides = 0.389 kg N eq.
1 kg ammonia = 0.092 kg N eq.
EP, terrestrial, accumulated exceedance, EN 15804. Version: February 2023.
Original reference
Seppälä et al. 2006, Posch et al. 2008
Examples, unspecified emissions to air, unspecified location
1 kg nitrogen oxides = 4.26 mol N eq.
1 kg nitrate = 3.16065 mol N eq.
1 kg ammonia = 13.47 kg N eq.
Impact assessment method: Photochemical ozone creation potential (POCP), LOTOS-EUROS as applied in ReCiPe, EN 15804. Version: February 2023.
Original reference
Van Zelm et al. 2008, ReCiPe 2008
Examples, unspecified emissions to air, unspecified location
1 kg nitrogen oxides = 1 kg NMVOC eq.
1 kg carbon monoxide (fossil) = 0.0456 kg NMVOC eq.
1 kg acetic acid = 0.164 kg NMVOC eq.
Impact assessment method: Ozone depletion potential (ODP), EN 15804. Version: February 2023.
Original reference
WMO 2014
Examples for unspecified emissions to air
1 kg halon-1211 = 6.9 kg CFC 11 eq.
1 kg methyl bromide = 0.57 kg CFC 11 eq.
1 kg CFC 11 = 1 kg CFC 11 eq.
Impact assessment method: Abiotic depletion potential (ADP) for minerals and metals, EN 15804. Version: February 2023.
Original references
Guinée et al. 2002, van Oers et al. 2002, CML 2001 baseline (Version: January 2016)
Examples
1 kg antimony = 1 kg Sb eq.
1 kg aluminium = 1.09 * 10^-9 Sb eq.
1 kg silver = 1.18 kg Sb eq.
Disclaimer is mandatory
The results of this indicator shall always be accompanied with the following disclaimer, both in the LCA report and in the EPD: "The results of this environmental impact indicator shall be used with care as the uncertainties of the results are high and as there is limited experience with the indicator."
Please note that in Version 1.0 of the default list of indicators, this indicator may be referred to as ADP elements.
Impact assessment method: Abiotic depletion potential (ADP) for fossil resources, EN 15804. Version: August 2021.
Original references
Guinée et al. 2002, van Oers et al. 2002, CML 2001 baseline (Version: January 2016)
Examples
1 kg coal hard = 27.91 MJ
1 kg coal soft, lignite = 13.96 MJ
Disclaimer is mandatory
The results of this indicator shall always be accompanied with the following disclaimer, both in the LCA report and in the EPD: "The results of this environmental impact indicator shall be used with care as the uncertainties of the results are high and as there is limited experience with the indicator."
Impact assessment method: Water deprivation potential (WDP), Available water remaining (AWARE) method, EN 15804.
Original reference
Boulay et al (2017)
Disclaimer is mandatory
The results of this indicator shall always be accompanied with the following disclaimer, both in the LCA report and in the EPD: "The results of this environmental impact indicator shall be used with care as the uncertainties of the results are high and as there is limited experience with the indicator."
Please note that in Version 1.0 of the default list of indicators, this indicator may be referred to as water scarcity footprint (WSP). Sometimes it is also referred to as deprivation-weighted water consumption.
Below are guidance and clarifications for some of the environmental performance indicators. A PCR may provide further guidance for its specific product category. If below guidance deviates from rules in a PCR or an applicable normative standard (e.g., EN 15804), the rules in the PCR or the standard prevails.
Greenhouse gas emissions and removals
The climate impact assessment shall include emissions and removals of greenhouse gases arising from fossil sources, biogenic sources, and direct land use change. The reporting shall be done in separate sub-indicators for the different sources, unless other guidance is provided in the PCR.
For human food and animal feed, emissions and removals arising from biogenic sources that become an ingested part of the product shall not be included. Greenhouse gas emissions (except CO2) arising from the degradation of waste food and feed, or enteric fermentation, shall be included.
Where a secondary material with a carbon content enters the system boundary, the quantity of carbon content should be accounted in the same way as if it were a primary material.
When GHG emissions and removals arising from the use stage and/or from the end-of-life stage occur over more than 10 years after the product has been brought into use, the timing of GHG emissions and removals relative to the year of production of the product shall be specified in the life cycle inventory (unless otherwise is specified in the reference PCR). The effect of timing on the climate impact results, shall however not be accounted for in the impact assessment.
Carbon sequestration and stored carbon
Permanent storage of carbon is when some or all removed carbon is not emitted to the atmosphere within the 100-year assessment period. This carbon shall be assumed to be released within 100 years anyway and thus be accounted for as a release of CO2 in the life cycle inventory. For carbon in the product, this virtual emission of carbon shall be added to the end-of-life product. This means that permanent storage of carbon in products, landfills or by carbon capture and storage (CCS) cannot be considered when calculating the climate change results, regardless of whether the carbon is of fossil or biogenic origin. This ban of considering long-term storage is temporary until the International EPD System provides general criteria for accepted permanent carbon storage. Specific PCRs may deviate from this rule by providing such criteria.
An exception to the above rule is the uptake and storage of carbon in cement-based products and lime, so-called carbonation. This shall be accounted for in the GWP-fossil indicator.
Land management might result in changes of carbon stored as soil carbon or forest biomass. Unless otherwise stated in the PCR, it is optional to consider this in the climate impact assessment. If soil carbon change is accounted for, the guidance of how to account for this in ISO 14067 shall be followed.
GHG emissions and removals occurring due to direct land use change (dLUC) within the last decades shall be assessed in accordance with internationally recognised methods, such as the IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories and included in the CFP. The net dLUC GHG emissions and removals shall be documented separately in the EPD. If site-specific data are applied, they shall be transparently documented in the LCA report. If a national approach is used, the data shall be based on a verified study, a peer-reviewed study or similar scientific evidence and shall be documented in the project report.
More guidance on the GWP-biogenic indicators is given below.
Offsetting
GHG emissions offset mechanisms shall not be used in the assessment of the climate change indicators. Neither can the participation in offsetting programmes or the purchase of carbon neutral products be declared elsewhere in the EPD (see Section 7.4.8 of the GPI).
Aircraft emissions
Aircraft GHG emissions shall be included and documented separately if significant. In such cases, the rules of how to account for aircraft GHG emissions in ISO 14067 shall be followed.
GWP-biogenic
As of version 1.2 of PCR 2019:14 Construction products, it includes an annex (Annex 2) explaining and illustrating the basic principles of collecting, reporting, and checking the mass balance of biogenic carbon and calculating the GWP-biogenic results. Below is included a short version of this. For more information, see Annex 2 in PCR 2019:14, which also includes an illustrative example.
Generally, the LCI shall separate between fossil and biogenic carbon (typically as biogenic CO2, biogenic CH4, etc). Furthermore, the LCI shall report GHG emissions that arise from land use or land-use change separately, which are neither included in the GWP-fossil or GWP-biogenic results, but in the GWP-luluc results, to avoid double accounting.
The amount of biogenic carbon is an inherent material property, which sometimes is not included, or correctly accounted for, in generic datasets available in LCA software. Therefore, the amount of biogenic carbon in the product or the packaging – which is needed to correctly calculate the GWP-biogenic results and account for the content declaration – may have to be checked and added manually.
If there are biogenic CO2 emissions that are not from the burning or degradation of the product or its packaging, the initial uptake of this biogenic carbon shall be reported in the life-cycle stage (or module) where the emission occurs. This means that such emissions and uptakes will be balanced out in each individual life-cycle stage (or module). When calculating the GWP-biogenic results, an emission of biogenic CO2 and its uptake can therefore be set to zero for all flows that do not end up as content of the product or the packaging. Note that this concerns when the biogenic carbon is emitted as CO2; if the biogenic carbon uptake is instead, for example, released as CH4, the GWP-biogenic results will not be zero in each individual life-cycle stage (or module).
In case the biogenic carbon ends up as product or packaging content, the biogenic CO2 emissions of incinerating or degrading this carbon will then appear in the end-of-life stage (for construction products: in module C for the product, or in module A5 for packaging). If the biogenic carbon content of the product is not incinerated at end-of-life, for example because the carbon is permanently stored in the product (for more than 100 years) or because the carbon leaves the product system for reuse or recycling into a new product, a virtual emission of biogenic CO2 shall be added to the life-cycle stage from which the carbon leaves the studied product system, which most often is the end-of-life stage (module C); similarly an uptake of biogenic CO2 shall be added in, for example, the upstream stage (module A1) if recycled/reused biogenic carbon is used as an input. Thus it is not allowed to consider credits due to delayed emissions or permanent storage of biogenic carbon (or fossil carbon, see above). In short, the sum of the sequestered and emitted biogenic carbon during the product life cycle will always be zero.
For constructions products, the biogenic carbon of packaging material is most often emitted as biogenic CO2 emissions in module A5, and therefore the biogenic carbon stored in the packaging material can most often be balanced out within module A for (and thus A5 needs to be reported in such cases). Related, for construction products, note that biogenic carbon that ends up in product or packaging shall be separately declared in the content declaration, unless it is less than 5% of the mass of the product or the packaging, respectively.
In the end, the sum of the sequestered biogenic carbon and the biogenic carbon emitted or leaving the product system in any other way during the product life cycle shall always be zero.
When calculating the GWP-biogenic results, the LCA practitioner may notice that the LCI data as provided by the LCA tool/LCI database are not (normally) balanced out in each life-cycle stage/module, since the software/databases are not designed for this kind of calculation. Ideally this could be corrected by adding a sequestration of biogenic CO2 in the LCI within the same life-cycle stage/module. Alternatively, the emissions can be “neglected” by setting the CFs of these emissions to zero. Both alternatives follow the modular approach where the biogenic CO2 emissions are balanced out in each life-cycle stage/module.
An exception for when the contribution from uptake and emissions biogenic CO2 to GWP-biogenic is not zero over the product life cycle, is in EPDs of multiple products based on worst-case results. As such EPDs shall declare the worst-case results per module, there may be less uptake of biogenic CO2 in upstream processes than what is emitted in the use stage (for consumer packaging) or the end-of-life stage (for the product). This incomplete biogenic CO2 balance, and the resulting overestimated GWP-biogenic results, is accepted in such an EPD as it represents a conservative estimate of the results of the product group.
The LCA practitioner is recommended to use the dry matter of any biogenic material that is reported in the LCI. It is also recommended to check that the combustion figures in the LCI are correct. An example for wood: the lower heat value for dry matter of a certain wood species is 19.2 MJ/kg and the carbon content can be set to 50%. It can now be calculated that 95 g CO2/MJ is emitted when this wood is completely burned (1/19.20.544/12=0.095 kg CO2/MJ). Moreover, the dry matter for this wood species is 390 kg/m3, which is equal to a sequestration of 715 kg CO2/m3 (3900.544/12) dry matter of wood.
Additional requirements to comply with ISO 14067
The climate change results declared in the EPD can be compliant with ISO 14067, and be considered a carbon footprint of a product (CFP), if the following requirements are met:
If the EPD does not cover all life cycle stages from cradle to grave (e.g., it only covers modules A1-A3) or is based on a declared unit, it shall be described as a partial CFP.
If the EPD declares GWP results that account for the effect of timing of the GHG emissions and removals, these shall be separately declared and the method used to calculate the effect of timing shall be stated and justified in the EPD. Note: Such results can only be declared if allowed by the PCR.
Aircraft GHG emissions shall be included and documented separately and the rules of how to account for aircraft GHG emissions in ISO 14067 shall be followed.
The most updated IPCC characterisation factors shall be used, unless otherwise stated and justified. If the default GWP indicators to use (see above) do not refer to the most updated IPCC characterisation factors, the results using the most updated IPCC characterisation factors will have to be declared as additional results in the EPD.
If the electricity modelling is based on the use of a contractual instrument without direct coupling to the electricity itself, and electricity may have been exported without being excluded from the supplied mix, a sensitivity analysis using location-based modelling (consumption mix of the market) shall be included in the LCA report.
If use stage assumptions are significant for the results, the LCA report shall include a sensitivity analysis exploring the influence of these assumptions.
In cradle-to-gate studies (e.g., including modules A1-A3), information on biogenic carbon content of product and packaging shall be declared in the EPD, also when the biogenic content is less than 5% of the product or packaging content.
If any of the above requirements cannot be fulfilled due to rules in the PCR, the EPD can’t comply to ISO 14067.
Net freshwater use is included as a resource use indicator, calculated from the life cycle inventory. Additionally, the water deprivation indicator provides information related to the environmental impact of this water use depending on the availability of water in different geographical locations, using the AWARE method. This method is based on the inverse of the difference between water availability per area and demand per area. It quantifies the potential of water deprivation, to either humans or ecosystems, and serves in calculating the impact score of water consumption at midpoint in LCA or to calculate a water scarcity footprint as per ISO 14046. It is based on the available water remaining (AWARE) per unit of surface in a given watershed relative to the world average, after human and aquatic ecosystem demands have been met. The resulting CF ranges between 0.1 and 100, and is meant to be multiplied with the local water consumption inventory.
Example
582 m3 water consumed per ton of grapes produced in Mendoza, Argentina:
WDP = 582 m3 water x 37.597 (Agg_CF_irri for Argentina) = 21,881 m3 world eq. deprived/ton grape