LCAs and EPDs

LCA

Life Cycle Assessment is a globally recognised framework for the evaluation of environmental impacts of products and services. The LCA practice is regulated by standards; fundamental standards are ISO 14040 and 14044, with additional ones to keep in mind depending on the objective of the assessment.

The main standard applicable to LCA of products in the construction sector is EN 15804, however it is good practice to follow rules focused on more specific product categories to make sure that the LCA results are accurately reflecting a product’s impacts.

EPD

This is also the requirement to produce Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs); EPDs are documents reporting the impact results of an LCA study carried out strictly following the requirements of Product Category Rules (PCRs), published by entities called Program Operators (POs) and verified by an independent party.

Harmonisation

Despite being regulated by several standards and rules, LCA results may be challenging to compare, if they were obtained following PCRs from different POs. This is why, in order to minimise these uncertainties and strive for harmonisation, it is important that PCRs are aligned with each other or at least linked by mutual recognition agreements.


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Environmental impact assessment results are useful to specifiers and clients wanting to add this type of information in their specification or reporting processes, but also to aid decision making, especially for projects that have so-called “carbon budgets”. These assessments are also helpful to manufacturers, to understand more about their products and highlight areas that can be changed or improved to meet targets and achieve more sustainable products.

Whilst we believe that by combining the information from TM65 and TM66 assessments we can draw a satisfactory picture of the sustainability of our products, the information we can obtain through LCA goes even further in detail.

Carrying out an LCA is not a simple task: it requires detailed information of each material and component included in a product, traced back to the supply chain, information on shipping methods, packaging and manufacturing, with the respective waste disposal activities. The good thing is that, at the end of this process, we are able to have a clear picture of all the inputs, outputs and impacts associated to all operations needed for the product. This means that we can know what the environmental hotspots of our product system are, and which actions we should take to reduce them.

Through LCA we are able to transparently communicate detailed environmental information about our products to our customers, and even potential benefits associated with choosing a certain option or process instead of a different one.  

At Stoane Lighting, we acknowledge the importance of moving towards a harmonised LCA practice in the lighting industry.

With luminaires being electricity-consuming products which can be applied in different settings based on design requirements, it is important that aspects of these products which could be causing major impact variations are accounted for in a standardised way. This is why we believe that the PCR (PCR part B or PSR – Product Specific Rules) endorsed by LightingEurope, PSR0014 ed.2 for luminaires by PEP Ecopassport, represents the most comprehensive and robust set of rules for the LCA of luminaires. Therefore, these are the guidelines we follow for all our LCA studies, making sure to keep our assessments consistent across our product ranges.

GreenLight Alliance

In the GreenLight Alliance column in arc magazine, we have shared great detail about the process and achievements of LightingEurope and PEP Ecopassport's work to publish PSR0014 ed.2. 

Read Here

We also believe in the importance of sharing reliable information with our customers, therefore having our LCA studies third-party verified and published as EPDs (as stated in our environmental policy, link) is our goal. However, as the LCA verification procedure may be associated with long processing times, we will also share LCA results of our products before they become EPDs, obtained using the same rules and methods – these can be referred to as self-declared or Type II statements. We want people to have access to this information and we don’t want to put it behind a pay wall or having people wait a long time for it. We are a small company but we have LCA capability, and we want our clients to benefit from it.

Building in-house LCA capability was the reason why in 2021 we took part into a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) project with Edinburgh Napier University.  The project delivered an in-house data collection and elaboration process, an LCA product template tailored to our luminaires and a reporting system which can be adapted to EPD creation or other reporting needs.


TM65 allows us to carry out embodied carbon assessments of our products quickly and with a reasonable degree of confidence on the results. This means that we can use the results to inform our clients about the embodied carbon of our products, but also to keep track of it for our entire standard production. We carry out this assessment yearly, to make sure that changes in production are captured in the results.

A self-declared or Type II Environmental Statement is a form of environmental communication regulated by the ISO 14021:2016+A1:2021 standard, as part of the ISO 14020 series. It is defined as an environmental statement that does not go through third-party verification, however it still needs to follow standardised procedures to be communicated. In particular, according to the ISO 14021 standard, self-declared statements need to be accurate and not misleading, accompanied by explanatory statements and unlikely to be misinterpreted.

We plan to use Type II environmental communications for our unverified LCA results, which are obtained following relevant ISO standard and PEP Ecopassport’s PSR0014 rules – the same we would use to create an LCA study for an EPD.

Start with the customer – find out what they want and give it to them.

Further information and initiatives

As discussed in great detail in a recent article in arc magazine issue #139 (read here), it is important to have an LCA perspective when looking at the wider environmental impact of products. This also means considering other impact indicators in addition to the global warming potential. For example, to understand the harm on the environment caused by manufacturing using virgin materials we can consult the Abiotic Depletion Potential of Elements (ADP-E), or to realise how important it is to properly recycle electronic components we can see how damaging burning electronic waste is for the release of toxic substances into the environment and the formation of particulate matter.

Given the complexity of the LCA process it is important that rules and guidelines are standardised, to be able to reduce result variations based on rule interpretation or modelling choices. If we all adopt harmonised rules, the comparison of the results will also be possible and more meaningful.

An important advancement to support result comparison is included in the update to edition 2 of PEP Ecopassport PSR0014, with the definition of the Functional Unit (FU) for luminaires, as “to produce artificial light of 1000 lumens over 35000 hours”. By defining this universal function, it is possible to compare the impacts of luminaires at the scale of the FU, i.e. only necessary to fulfil this specific function.

The definition of the FU, with several other additions to the PSR, were carried out in the framework of a LightingEurope-led task force of lighting experts – of which we were proudly part too. The update contributed to make the PSR for luminaires more complete and robust and, as a result, it was recognised by other POs and organisations as a set of rules to align with, to support the development of a harmonised LCA approach in lighting.