Do I need EPDs as a building product manufacturer? Spoiler: Yes.
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One of the most frequent questions that building product manufacturers ask us: What sustainable key figures and information do architects and planners expect from our products? The clear answer: There are no uniform standards - but there is hardly any way around an EPD. This is shown not only by our experience, but also by the latest figures from a DGNB and BPIE survey*.
First things first: What is an EPD?
An Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) is a standardised, externally audited environmental product declaration. In short, it makes the environmental impact of a building material or product transparent in accordance with standardised, industry-wide rules.
For planners, EPDs are an important tool for making sustainable decisions because they provide reliable data on the life cycle assessment of a product - from manufacture and use through to recycling. They are also essential for the ecological assessment of buildings, for example as part of a life cycle analysis (LCA). In Germany, both manufacturer-specific EPDs and generic life cycle assessment data are publicly available in Ökobaudat (a government database for environmental information on construction products) and are updated regularly.
EPDs are therefore not a nice-to-have but a must-have.
The demand for Environmental Product Declarations has risen sharply in recent years. Why?
- Because EPDs are the lowest common denominator for providing architecture firms with comparable environmental information.
- Because planners rely on EPDs to navigate the jungle of environmental labels and make well-informed decisions.
No surprise, then, that 85 percent of construction product manufacturers in the DGNB/BPIE survey state that they create EPDs primarily due to customer demand. They are especially relevant for building certifications, where environmental performance indicators play a crucial role.
And the trend continues:
- From 2027, disclosing the climate impact of construction products will be mandatory.
- From 2028, large new buildings will be required to provide a life cycle assessment.
This means that EPDs will evolve from a voluntary measure into a de facto regulatory standard. Conversations with our hej.build architecture advisory board confirm this trend: EPDs are now a key criterion for evaluating construction products in the early planning phase. Major architecture firms like HPP Architekten (Düsseldorf) and Lendager (Copenhagen) already request this information as a standard practice—either in initial discussions or online.
Is the creation of EPDs already worthwhile for manufacturers?
According to the DGNB and BPIE survey, there are three key advantages:
- 27 per cent of manufacturers observe a higher demand for products that have an EPD. This is a clear competitive advantage over products and manufacturers that do not (yet) have an EPD.
- 75 per cent actively use the life cycle assessment data for their environmental communication.
- And actually the most pleasing aspect: 58 percent of manufacturers optimise their production processes on the basis of EPD data. In some cases, material savings potential and CO₂ reduction opportunities only become visible through systematic recording.
Nevertheless, not all products have an EPD. Why is that?
- High costs: Creating an EPD costs between €5,000 and €20,000 on average, with the largest share being incurred by life cycle assessment service providers - not including in-house personnel costs.
- Lack of internal data: Many manufacturers have problems collecting the necessary data internally. This prolongs the processes and costs even more money.
- Long processing times: Bottlenecks at test centres can delay the process by months.
So what can manufacturers do now?
Keep at it and develop a medium-term strategy: Environmental product declarations should be created for at least the most important products. At the same time, it is important to optimise internal processes so that relevant data is recorded in a standardised way and does not have to be painstakingly compiled. And speaking of standardisation: despite high initial investments, more and more companies are turning to automated solutions. Already 40 per cent of the manufacturers surveyed use EPD tools to reduce the workload and simplify the calculation of life cycle assessment data. These digital tools reduce the costs per product in the long term and make the entire process more efficient.
Artificial intelligence will also play an important role in the future. Start-ups such as Emidat are already working on solutions that enable ‘standard-compliant and automatically verified EPDs with just a few clicks’ and thus take the next step towards standardised and more easily accessible environmental information for construction products.
Industry EPD or individual declaration? The trend is clear.
And there is one more important aspect we would like to pass on to you: As demand for environmental product declarations increases, there is a clear shift away from general industry EPDs towards company-specific declarations. While an industry EPD only provides average values for a material or product, individual EPDs allow for a more precise differentiation of sustainable product properties. Manufacturers who want to position themselves clearly in the market need reliable, specific environmental indicators that they do not share with competitors in the industry.
However, it is not only demand that is increasing, regulation is also following suit: The EU's Green Claims Directive stipulates that verifiable life cycle assessments will be required in future for construction products with environmental claims. This will make sustainability communication more transparent - and a real competitive advantage for manufacturers who already rely on reliable data.
We also offer customised training courses for marketing and sales teams to build up expertise in sustainable communication and the targeted use of environmental indicators. Whether basic knowledge, product-specific requirements or the connection with building certifications: We are happy to customise the content flexibly to your needs. Please contact us if you are interested.
* How was the study conducted? The study combines a survey of building product manufacturers, the evaluation of Ökobaudat, the analysis of relevant regulations and interviews with experts. Around 200 companies were surveyed in July 2024, 59 responded - including mainly large companies. The aim was to collect reliable data on the challenges, costs and opportunities of EPDs.
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