Making it easier for the construction industry to use commonly interpreted environmental product declarations

With a large number of EPDs already available, Plant and IVL's initiative is an important milestone in the industry's quest for increased transparency and reduced climate impact. The Resource Hub database from IVL is continuously updated with new EPDs that are ready to use, giving developers the tools they need to make informed choices that support sustainable development.

"With the help of the Resource Hub, everyone will make the same interpretations of the EPD data. The idea is that the tools should compete with different functions, not with who interprets the data best," says Martin Erlandsson, life cycle expert at IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute.

The Resource Hub strives to be the most accessible and user-friendly EPD source on the market. 'Ready-to-use' means, among other things, that the climate impact is stated as calculated by the National Board of Housing, Building and Planning, i.e. with GWP - global warming potential, and GHG - greenhouse gases, and there is a mapping against the National Board of Housing, Building and Planning's climate database. By gathering all generic EPD data in one place, and through automatic retrieval from all leading EPD hubs, Plant ensures that users can make the most attractive and environmentally friendly choices without manual intervention or extra cost.

"We see it as our task to make climate data available free of charge to speed up the industry's transition. It should not be a service that costs, but a resource available to everyone who wants to reduce the construction sector's climate impact," says Pelle Tunell, CEO of Plant.

This integration is the start of a new way of working. Plant has started the process of loading and verifying all available EPDs and plans to continue to expand the database with the help of IVL to support an increasingly sustainable construction sector. In the long term, the vision is to make environmental data fully accessible, free and open source to accelerate and simplify the industry's common climate transition.