Ecolabel Criteria for Buildings

This project for Nordic Ecolabelling entails a review and assessment life-cycle based standards, methods and tools available for designers and producers of buildings and building materials.

The client

Ecolabelling Denmark – Denmark

Our role

2.-0 LCA consultants is sole consultant for this project, supported by inhouse expertise from Ecolabelling Denmark/Nordic Ecolabelling and financially supported by Nordic Council of Ministers. Project completed October 2020.

Current landscape of life-cycle based standards, methods and tools

This project for Nordic Ecolabelling reviewed the current landscape of life-cycle based standards, methods and tools available for designers and producers of buildings and building materials. The primary objective was to assess the feasibility of adding additional ecolabel criteria for specific building materials or parts requiring calculations of the global warming impact for either a part or the entire life cycle of the buildings. The project resulted in a publicly available report where we identify a number of ambiguities in the standards that cause inconsistencies in their interpretation and practical implementation, resulting in a limited comparability of results from different databases and tools. We conclude that the current consistency and comparability of life-cycle based calculations for construction products are insufficient to be the basis for the Nordic Ecolabelling programme to require such calculations as part of their criteria. The report includes a number of additional recommendations to Nordic Ecolabelling.