2023 Carbon Leadership Forum North American Material Baselines - Report & Appendices

Abstract

The CLF North American Material Baselines Report provides a snapshot of the state of Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) for North American-produced construction materials. The report includes background and methodology, Baseline values, and a detailed appendix for each material category. The CLF Baseline values represent an estimate of industry-average GHG emissions for construction materials. An overwhelming majority of the CLF Baselines published in this report are based on a North American industry-wide EPD if one was available at the time of publication. As such, it is appropriate to use this number as a rough estimate of a product type’s embodied carbon before a specific product has been selected or as a reference value against which product-level comparisons can be made.

Each material category has a detailed appendix that includes a description of the embodied carbon impacts, the available EPDs, and summary statistics. The Appendices in this report allow users to better understand the availability of existing industry-wide and product EPDs, and the variability of product types across a category. The snapshot of available EPDs summarized in each Appendix was assembled using the EC3 database in Fall 2022.