Episode 27: How Life Cycle Assessment Optimized Certification Demonstrates Embodied Carbon Reductions in Products
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Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) Optimized certification demonstrates embodied carbon reductions in products. In this episode, Tad and Julianna discuss how to lower the embodied carbon of your products, how to use LCA to optimize your products, the market drivers behind embodied carbon reductions, and the process behind LCA Optimized certifications. We also answer an audience question at the end of the episode about how to calculate Scope 3 emissions when your company is outsourcing all manufacturing.
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there's a lot of market drivers out there right now for this. We've recently noticed that as well in the Inflation Reduction Act. Can you talk more about these drivers and why it is important for companies to start thinking about this?
“Yeah, definitely. One thing that really started the movement and driver on this would be the United States Green Building Council when they rolled out their LEED v4.1 of the green building standard for new construction and different things like that. That standard actually recognizes companies that do what we call optimization of their products. So they figured out a way to understand the life cycle impacts and then they figured out a way to reduce that carbon footprint or embodied carbon of the product. That then qualifies for additional points in the green building standard to earn points towards your green building certification. The other thing that we've seen is major corporations have jumped on this. For example, Microsoft Corporation, they're building a brand new campus out in Redmond, WA, and they challenge the architects to design the building not only to be energy efficient in using energy, but also to reduce the embodied energy of all the materials used in the building by at least 30%.
So whether they're going for LEED certification or not, that's a big corporation saying, “Hey, we want to do this.” In fact, there's a great paper that they put out basically talking about how they approach that as a company that's publicly available. That's two big drivers that really started the movement. Now we're seeing all the architects and engineers that are designing these buildings working on meeting the requirements for making these new buildings, embracing it and adopting it. The Inflation Reduction Act is another one, which is basically federally mandated now, and there's money available to drive this. In fact, we are on a call this week with the Environmental Protection Agency and they're talking about expanding the ECOLOGO program for the federal government and what they want to emphasize more is reduced embodied carbon products.
The reason they're doing that is because of the federal purchasers. Just so everybody knows, the federal government is with the largest purchaser in the world of goods and services. So they have directives through executive orders from the Biden Administration and also federal acquisition regulations that require them to select greener or more sustainable products. Originally they were only looking at products that had recycled content or maybe one single attribute, but now they're really pushing for selecting products that look at a multi-attribute lens. So looking at multiple things that you can do to the product to make it more sustainable. They're also really going to emphasize certifications and verifications around reduced embodied carbon or lower embodied carbon in products, especially in building products. That's where their big focus is right now. But there's millions of dollars available to push more of this.
There’s also a couple billion dollars for the General Services Administration in that Inflation Reduction Act to integrate more lower embodied carbon products into their buildings as they construct and renovate buildings. So this is a big deal. This is really pushing it and we're seeing a lot of activity around this. So I'm excited because this is something that we hoped for for years, that people would really get it and understand how we have to take many approaches if we're really going to address the challenges that face us with climate change and everything.”
So how do these embodied carbon reductions in products actually get verified and certified?
“There's going to be a process like everything, so basically to have that verification done, it would be important for whoever is making the claim. Let's say it's a building product company and they're talking about the fact that they're reducing the carbon footprint of the products. They would've had to have done a life cycle assessment of the first generation of the product. So they looked at it and they understood where the impacts were. For instance, the raw materials, manufacturing, transportation and that kind of thing. They would look at that from their perspective and see what's going on in terms of where are the impacts? What are the hot spots? Is it certain raw materials? Is it the energy we're using in our plant?
They would then go into their sustainable product innovation process and use that information and then they would make changes to the product or they would make changes in their manufacturing plant. Next, they would run a second life cycle assessment to show they actually made these changes and here was the effect. So you could physically see from the LCA, you would be able to compare generation one to generation two, and you would see where those impacts got reduced. If you changed out some raw materials or used less raw materials, you would see the carbon footprint come down. If you made your manufacturing facility more energy efficient, you would see the carbon footprint of the product come down because you're always looking at energy use per product produced. So that's how they would have the background to be verified.
Then what would happen is the third-party verification company would get both of those LCAs and they would take a deep dive. They would make sure that it was done to acceptable standards, like I said, ISO 14040 and 14044. They would then verify that they were done in a similar manner. So you can compare apples to apples. You'd be looking at the software used, the data sets and different things like that from the life cycle assessment. Then the most important thing here to state would be if you're getting verified or certified, you would have to have evidence that you actually did something. Because you can't just run an LCA and then run it again and suddenly the product's better and then you're saying, “Well, why did this happen?”
An example of that could be the fact that the electricity grid gets a little cleaner. Because over time we're seeing more renewable energy being used. So the electrons that are coming into the buildings from the grid are actually getting cleaner because there's more coming in from renewables like solar and wind and less from coal fire. Because the grid mix is changing, you can't just basically claim that you reduced the embodied carbon by that. So we'd be looking at evidence like the raw material changes that they used, less raw materials or a different raw material that had a lower carbon footprint or they added recycled content that greatly reduced the carbon footprint or they physically made changes in the factory. Like perhaps they were able to collect waste heat from one process to another and reduce the amount of natural gas in a drawing process. Or they figured out a way to get more efficient motors or do energy conservation measures that really reduced that energy use in producing the product. So those would be the important things to be verified and those would have to be checked and there would have to be evidence and documentation of them in order for this to be a verified or certified claim.”
At Green Circle Certified, this process is called our Life Cycle Assessment Optimized certification. So if you go through that, you would get that mark and be able to use it to describe the embodied carbon reductions you have in your products?
“We actually do have quite a few products that have been certified to this already. I will also point out that this process that I just explained has gone through a review in coordination with the United States Green Building Council on the way that things are evaluated and documented to verify this. It’s exciting when you start to see some of the things that have been happening, especially when the company uses the LCA and the sustainable product innovation process, and they were seeing reductions anywhere from 2% carbon footprint reduction all the way up to like 35%, 38% just by really focusing on this. Imagine the power of that, because a company can obviously save energy in their building, but if they're making a million of these products a year or 2 million of these products a year and you reduce that carbon footprint, it's like the multiplier effect. It's a huge, huge benefit. The more companies that do this, the better off we're going to be because we're looking at everything across the board and doing that also drives a circular economy. We did a podcast on circularity. There's so many great things about doing this.
Absolutely. Green Circle Certified, as we have talked about in previous podcasts, has been included in Amazon's Climate Pledge Friendly Program. Our Life Cycle Assessment Optimized certification is one of the certifications that have qualified to be included in that program. So we're really proud of it and like Tad said, it's really making a huge difference.
It is. I'm excited about this. I know when we launched the Life Cycle Assessment Optimized certification back in 2010 or 2011, we were way ahead of our time and now it's actually coming back around and people are really seeing the value of it. So I definitely think this is a great solution for the planet and it gives me a lot of optimism and hope that as more and more companies do this, it's going to really get that multiplier effect that we need.”
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