Challenges in the harmonisation and digitalisation of Environmental Product Declarations for construction products in the European context

In the last decade, efforts have multiplied to develop and refine a framework for converting human-readable to machine-readable Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs). Still, the fast growth of the topic created several issues. These are mostly due to changing policy landscape, numerous parallel initiatives, and the difficulty of providing a tamper- and mistake-proof schema due to the huge size of the challenge.

This work objectively analyses and discusses challenges in the harmonisation and digitalisation of EPDs for construction products in the European context. By inspecting 3286 available datasets on the largest European aggregator of EPDs, the trends, issues, and opportunities are identified on a per data field basis.

Preparation of the data for analysis disclosed several significant inconsistencies within the datasets. The study of data fields addressing contextualization of use exposed the heterogeneity in implementing guidelines by different Programme Operators (POs). Regarding the data fields addressing LCA impacts evaluation, the datasets compliant with EN 15804:A2-2019 seem to be short of expectations regarding their aims, particularly reporting end-of-life cycle stages impacts. The correlation analysis between environmental impact indicators points to strong and statistically significant coefficients and the existence of behavioural patterns for certain groups, which question the relevance of reporting such a wide range of impact indicators. The reduction of their number could lead to faster adoption by the industry and a higher proliferation of this LCA instrument by curtailing entry costs.

While the available volume of data portrays a seemingly homogeneous structure, reality does not follow. The sheer extent of the challenge, the multiple distinct initiatives, and the realized loosely enforced digital format schema seem to have contributed to a quite heterogeneous bundle of aggregated data. Future works should explore the application of data templates for the use of EPDs in digital processes.