The EN15804 is one of the most important sustainability standards for creating Environmental Product Declaration (EPD)’s in the construction sector in the European Union.
The standard was first published in 2012 and defines how building products manufacturer should develop their EPD. The first version of EPD Ireland’s Product Category Rules was based on this standard.
In July 2019, a major amendment of this standard, EN15804+A2, was approved, changing how Environmental Product Declarations are created. It will become mandatory for use in regulation in the EU from July 2022.
To be compliant with the EN 15804 +A2 2019 and to enable manufacturers to develop EPD conforming with the new standard, EPD Ireland amended its General Programme Instructions and Product Category Rules.
But what are the main changes? We summed them up in 6 paragraphs below:
END OF LIFE
All EPD must include an end-of-life scenario and module D which represent the Reuse – Recovery – Recycling potential. This means that circularity and recycling will play a larger role in defining environmental impact.
MORE LIFE STAGES COVERED:
All construction products must declare modules A1-A3 (production stages) but also C1-C4 (end of life stages) and, as said above, module D that were all optional before. Only under specific conditions, the standard still allows cradle-to-gate (A1-A3) EPD.
BIOGENIC CARBON
Biogenic Carbon is carbon stored in biological materials such as wood products. Biogenic carbon within a building product can be considered as a negative carbon emission in Module A1-A3 and a positive carbon emission at end of life when the biogenic carbon is emitted or transferred to the next product life cycle. The EPD now must report on Biogenic Carbon and this means that the biogenic carbon mass in the product and packaging needs to be declared as well as the biogenic carbon in construction products.
ADDITIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT INDICATORS
EN15804 + A1 EPD reported on 11 impact categories and 17 reporting categories (resource use, output flow data or waste generation). The amended standard now requires reporting on 13 impact categories with 6 additional environmental impact categories. The additional environmental impact categories are not mandatory on the EPD, but they need to be included in the LCA Report.
ILCD FORMAT
The revised version of the EN15804 requires additional changes in the quality assessment of data. The documentation and datasets need to be converted into the International Reference Life Cycle Data System (ILCD) format.
DETAILED DESCRIPTIONS OF FUNCTIONAL UNIT
EN15804+A2 adds that the functional unit allows comparison with other production systems that fulfil the same functional unit so the standard requires now a more detailed description of the functional or declared unit.
What does it mean for manufacturers who develop EPD?
If you are a manufacturer that developed an EPD under the previous standard, do not worry: all EPD to EN15804 +A1 will remain valid for their 5-year period of validity.
However, all EPD issued after the summer of 2022 must be in the EN 15804 + A2 2019 format. See what your options are below.
If you want to develop a new EPD, up to July 2022 you have three choices
- Publish your EPD to EN 15804 +A1 2013
- Publish your EPD to EN 15804 + A2 2019
- Publish your EPD to EN15804 +A2 2019 including EN 15804 +A1 2013 results
If you want to develop an EPD after July 2022, you have the following choices
- Publish your EPD to EN 15804 + A2 2019
- Publish your EPD to EN 15804 + A2 2019 including EN 15804 +A1 2013 results
Please note that the EN15978 (Sustainability of construction works. Assessment of environmental performance of buildings.) standard used by design professionals to calculate the full life cycle assessment of buildings also needs to be updated to match the changes to EN15804 +A2.
The work to update the EN15978 standard has started but will probably only come into use in late 2023. This means that for the interim period 15804+A1 data will continue to be used as not all the data in the revised version is considered compatible.
If you want to see your data used in building level LCA, it is highly recommended to include data tables developed to the 15804 +A1 standard up to the cut-off date.
If you have further questions, please contact us.