2021 Carbon Leadership Forum Material Baseline Report (version 2)

Abstract

The building industry has an essential role to play in tackling climate change associatedwith building construction and materials manufacturing. Our present understanding of the importance of embodied carbon has been enabled by rigorous quantitative modeling that tracks carbon emissions across the full life of materials and products, using life cycle assessment (LCA).

In recent years, the building industry has adopted LCA as the globally accepted method for evaluating and communicating environmental impacts, and applied these methods to the study of materials, products, and assemblies. LCA data and results are essential for guiding science-based efforts to decarbonize buildings and infrastructure.

The Carbon Leadership Forum (CLF) is part of a broad movement working to drive down the embodied carbon of building materials and products by encouraging the disclosure of high-quality embodied carbon data by manufacturers. It is essential that designers, owners, and policymakers have access to verified, third-party reviewed and published data on building materials and products in order to facilitate procurement decisions, set decarbonization targets, and inform design. One tool for achieving this goal has been the collection and use of Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) to inform decision-making. EPDs are third party-verified documents based on LCA models, written in conformance with international standards, that report the environmental impacts of a product. These declarations can be used to track supply chain-specific product data and compare products if the products are functionally equivalent and have aligned scopes. The development of material baselines originated in support of the Embodied Carbon in Construction Calculator (EC3) tool, which aims to collect all third-part-reviewed EPDs for published categories. The EC3 Baselines were originally published in 2019. This document supersedes those and the 2021 CLF Material Baseline Report version 1. (See the Updates section for a list of changes since the previous version.) The EC3 tool and its open-access database of digital EPDs is one source for accessing and evaluating available EPDs and the relative carbon impacts that they report. Such databases support designers, owners, and policymakers in selecting low-carbon products during procurement and design. These databases are dynamic, updated constantly as new products are added and upstream data on key processes, such as carbon intensity of regional electricity grids, are revised.

In order to set achievable targets, it is necessary to have a baseline from which to compare products within a material or product category. This document provides an overview of the 2021 CLF Material Baselines published by the CLF. This report constitutes an update to 2019 Beta Baselines and 2021 CLF Material Baselines Report version 1 with improved data sourcing, citation, and categories.