Glossary
Terminology
Burden of the Doubt
"Burden of the Doubt" is the opposite of "Benefit of the Doubt". Whenever an EPD does not explicitly provide information that is required for high confidence in the comparability of the result, an uncertainty penalty will be added. That penalty is the burden. It is represented visually by a fuzzy blue range above and below the line of the reported GWP value in the EPD
More broadly, for comparing EPDs, BuildingTransparency.org uses a Conservative value that is 80% likely to be above the actual value given the data currently known. Some sources of doubt include:
The exact product that will be delivered to the job site is subject to change in the future due to price, schedule, etc.
Missing or generic estimates for EC of inputs, which may not reflect actual conditions at the facility.
Measurement and estimation uncertainty
Manufacturing variation
Unknown or incompatible estimation methodologies.
Where a statistical profile of products is available, the 80th percentile highest-emitting product is assumed; otherwise a statistical estimate (mean + 0.92 standard deviations) is used.
Builders
Calculators within EC3 that allow users to estimate the quantity of materials in typical floor and wall assemblies in the absence of detailed quantity information.
Collection
A group of EPDs meeting a particular set of search terms, such as performance specifications and location. Typically a collection should represent a list of products functionally suitable for an application.
Industry EPD
EPD developed by an industry association on behalf of its member manufacturers. Multiple manufacturers provide data that is combined and averaged in order to determine the industry average impacts of similar products. Distinct from a Product EPD.
Product EPD
An EPD developed by a single manufacturer for a single product type. Reported impacts can be averaged across different variations of the same product type and across manufacturing locations, or they can report impacts for each variation and location individually. EC3 addresses the alignment of EPDs by including EPD uncertainty.
Operational Carbon
Carbon impact associated with a building’s day-to-day operations, such as energy usage and water consumption.
Product Category
Group of products that can fulfill equivalent functions (ISO 14025:2006).
Program Operator
Body or bodies that conduct a Type III environmental declaration program according to ISO 14025:2006. Program Operators maintain a set of rules called General Program Instructions that govern the program’s management including, but not limited to, procedures for EPD verification and publication, PCR creation, data safe-keeping, and approach to recognizing other Program Operators.
Cradle-to-gate
This term refers to the partial life cycle assessment of a product from the extraction of raw materials (cradle) to the factory gate (before it is transported to the consumer), also known as scope A1-A3. It includes the stages of material acquisition, manufacturing, and production but does not include the use and disposal phases of the product's life cycle.
Cradle-to-grave
This term refers to the full life cycle assessment of a product from the extraction of raw materials (cradle) to its disposal (grave), also known as scope A-C. It includes all stages of the product's life cycle: material acquisition, manufacturing, distribution, use, and end-of-life disposal. This comprehensive assessment helps to understand the total environmental impact of the product.
Cradle-to-cradle
This term refers to the full life cycle assessment of a product AND the benefits of reclaiming or repurposing it into new products after its useful life, creating a closed-loop system. This is also known as scope A-D. The concept emphasizes recycling and reusing materials in a way that mimics natural processes, where there is no waste, and everything is reused in some form.
Note that module D should always be considered and reported separately, since it is outside of the boundary of assessment of the current product, and can result in double counting of benefits of any subsequent products claiming benefits related to sourcing secondary materials.
Uniformat II
An element classification of parts of a building, defined in NIST6389 by Charette and Marshall. Widely used for Cost Estimation; Recommended here for Carbon Estimation.
Masterformat
A classification of materials and construction activities, defined by the Construction Specifications Institute (CSI). This is the typical classification system used by builders in North America.
OmniClass
A classification system used by many digital tools. It comprises of a combination of other classification systems like Uniformat, Masterformat, and others.
Abbreviations
ACC - Autodesk Construction Cloud
BIM - Building Information Modeling
Creation of 2D or 3D models using software that represent built assets, such as buildings. A widely-used means to create building drawings for construction and coordination purposes. Within the AEC industry, the majority of BIM models are created using Autodesk’s Revit software.
CLF - Carbon Leadership Forum
Non-profit organization aiming to transform the building sector to drastically reduce the embodied carbon in building materials and construction via research, resource development, cross-industry collaboration, and member-lead initiatives.
EC - Embodied Carbon
Carbon impact of a material or product that is associated with their production and construction or installation. At the building scale, a project’s embodied carbon impact is the sum of all the impacts of its components, such as structure, envelope, and interiors.
EPD - Environmental Product Declaration
An independently verified and registered document that communicates transparent and comparable information about life cycle environmental impact of products. It is a summary of product characteristics and LCA results, similar to a nutritional label for the environmental impacts of products.
GWP - Global Warming Potential
An environmental indicator which was developed to allow comparisons of the global warming impacts of different gases. It represents the heat absorbed by any greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, as a multiple of the heat that would be absorbed by the same mass of carbon dioxide. GWP is how a building’s carbon footprint is quantified, with units of kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent (kgCO2e).
LCI - Life Cycle Inventory
Detailed list of inputs and outputs of resources and emissions associated with each process.
LCA - Life Cycle Assessment
Compilation and evaluation of the inputs, outputs and the potential environmental impacts of a product system throughout its life cycle (ISO 14040:2006 and ISO 14044:2006).
LCIA - Life Cycle Impact Assessment
Describes methods for converting inventory data from a life cycle assessment into a set of potential impacts. This enables practitioners and decision makers to better understand the damage caused by resource use and emissions. Example LCIA Methods include TRACI 2.1, CML, and ReCiPe.
PCR - Product Category Rules
A set of rules, requirements, and guidelines for developing environmental product declarations for one or more product categories.
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