Lat­est sta­tus of Advi­so­ry Board (SVR) deci­sions: Octo­ber 2023

All res­o­lu­tions of the IBU Coun­cil of Experts can be read here. We are hap­py to send you the res­o­lu­tions on request.

Advi­so­ry Board (SVR) — Deci­sions Octo­ber 2023

Deci­sion 20230904–3:
The IBU is devel­op­ing rules for the pub­li­ca­tion of EPDs for so-called reuse prod­ucts. The rules have been agreed, the home­page has been updat­ed accord­ing­ly, and they will be includ­ed as an annex in the next ver­sion of the PCR Part A. Requests from indus­try are wel­comed by the SVR and accom­pa­nied by the IBU.

The annex to PCR Part A for ReUse prod­ucts is avail­able on request and at epd-online.com.

Advi­so­ry Board (SVR) — Deci­sions May 2023

The IBU Advi­so­ry Board (SVR) decid­ed in its last meet­ing in May 2023 on these topics.

Deci­sion No. 20230523‑b:

Results accord­ing to EN 15804 + A1 may be attached as a ver­i­fied annex to a valid EPD accord­ing to EN 15804+A2. How­ev­er, this annex is not digitized.

An EPD accord­ing to EN 15804 + A1 alone is no longer allowed.

Deci­sion No. 20200924‑e:
Due to insuf­fi­cient expe­ri­ence in the con­struc­tion sec­tor, the appli­ca­tion is rejected.

Advi­so­ry Board (SVR) — Deci­sions May 2020

The IBU Advi­so­ry Board (SVR) decid­ed in its last meet­ing in May 2020 on these topics.

Deci­sion 20200528‑b:
1. no VOC and formalde­hyde emis­sions in core EPDs.
2. proof of formalde­hyde emis­sions accord­ing to the test meth­ods spec­i­fied in the respec­tive prod­uct standards
Test meth­ods and proof of VOC emis­sions accord­ing to the AgBB scheme.

Deci­sion 20200528‑c:
A note on exten­sion shall be pro­vid­ed in the scope of the EPD.

Deci­sion 20200528‑d:
EPD tools will con­tin­ue to be pre­sent­ed to the SVR.

Advi­so­ry Board (SVR) — Deci­sions Octo­ber 2019

Prod­uct Cat­e­go­ry Rules (the PCRs can be com­ment­ed in the forum)

Deci­sion no. 20191018‑f:

The PCR green roof sys­tems are to be revised in accor­dance with the items above and then entered into the SVR cir­cu­la­tion procedure.

Deci­sion no. 20191018‑g:

The PCR on pre­fab­ri­cat­ed sup­port­ing ele­ments made of wood and wood-based mate­ri­als is to be revised in accor­dance with the items above and then published.

Deci­sion no. 20191018‑h:

The pro­ce­dure for PCR revi­sion is to be sup­ple­ment­ed by and/or revised to include the com­ments by the SVR.

Advi­so­ry Board (SVR) — Deci­sions May 2019

The IBU Advi­so­ry Board (SVR) decid­ed in its last meet­ing in May 2019 on these topics.

Sub­se­quent change fol­low­ing the Deci­sion No. 20180420‑f Pri­ma­ry energy 

(“Expla­na­tions and Rules of Cal­cu­la­tion for the Result Indi­ca­tors and Chap­ter 7.1.3.”)

In addi­tion, the results table was sup­ple­ment­ed by indi­ca­tors or units (pri­ma­ry ener­gy, use of sec­ondary sub­stances (in MJ and kg), sub­stances for recy­cling (in MJ and kg), sub­stances for ener­gy recov­ery (in MJ and kg)). In the sub­se­quent coor­di­na­tion with oth­er users and EPD cre­ators, the con­tent and the form of the dec­la­ra­tion in addi­tion­al lines required fur­ther clarification.

As Euro­pean har­mo­niza­tion is intend­ed, an appli­ca­tion to TC 350, WG 3 will be sub­mit­ted. PCR Part A ver­sion 1.6 will tem­porar­i­ly apply for chap­ter 7.1.3.

 

Deci­sion No. 20190524‑e:

The fol­low­ing res­o­lu­tion is suspended

Deci­sion No. 20190220‑d:

The changes to the pri­ma­ry ener­gy (Deci­sion No. 20180420‑f ) will be pub­lished with a sup­ple­ment for sys­tems with water content.

Advi­so­ry Board (SVR) — Deci­sions Octo­ber 2018

The IBU Advi­so­ry Board (SVR) decid­ed in its last meet­ing in Octo­ber 2018 on these topics.

Sup­ple­ments to the PCR, Part B: Floor coverings 

  • The PCR on floor cov­er­ings does not require the AgBB scheme in sec­tion 7.1 although the AgBB scheme was devel­oped for this appli­ca­tion. Even if the ECA report com­pris­es the AgBB scheme, the AgBB table must be list­ed here.

  • ERFMI asked IBU in Jan­u­ary whether addi­tion­al indi­ca­tors can be declared in the EPD, in par­tic­u­lar tox­i­c­i­ty indi­ca­tors. Dr Schmincke report­ed that owing to the cur­rent lev­el of dis­cus­sion in the CEN/TC 350 on the new EN 15804+A2, it is very like­ly that there will be new indi­ca­tors as of 2019. Accord­ing­ly, there is no rea­son not to declare them in an IBU EPD.

  • The declared addi­tion­al indi­ca­tors would need to com­ply with those in the EN 15804+A2 and they would also have to be based on the same methods.

  • The indi­ca­tors may not yet be declared in core EPDs.

  • A dec­la­ra­tion of fur­ther indi­ca­tors from the list of addi­tion­al indi­ca­tors in EN 15804+A2 is pos­si­ble in an annex to the EPD if it is clear­ly indi­cat­ed as such, where­by the “dis­claimers” spec­i­fied in EN 15804+A2 on method­i­cal or data-based restric­tions of the addi­tion­al declared indi­ca­tors must be used.

Deci­sion no. 20181019‑f:

The PCR, Part B: Floor cov­er­ings are sup­ple­ment­ed in sec­tion 7.1. to include the AgBB scheme table.

No pro­vi­sion­al dec­la­ra­tion of new indi­ca­tors from the EN 15084+A2

Deci­sion no. 20181019‑g: New indi­ca­tors from the EN 15804+A2 may not yet be declared in a core EPD. In an IBU EPD or in an annex to a core EPD, fol­low­ing co-ordi­na­tion with the SVR only the indi­ca­tors from EN 15804 +A2 may be declared if it is clear that they involve addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion and not the core indi­ca­tors, where­by the “dis­claimers” spec­i­fied in EN 15804+A2 on method­i­cal or data-based restric­tions of the addi­tion­al declared indi­ca­tors must be used. This reg­u­la­tion only applies pro­vi­sion­al­ly; it is not a prece­dent for future inte­gra­tion of the addi­tion­al indi­ca­tors of EN 15804+A2 in the IBU range.

Allo­ca­tion reg­u­la­tion for fly ash

  • Cur­rent­ly, the allo­ca­tion reg­u­la­tions for han­dling blast fur­nace slag and fly ash are not con­sis­tent­ly spec­i­fied in the PCRs.

  • Fly ash can be regard­ed as less crit­i­cal than slag.

  • Com­par­i­son of var­i­ous pos­si­ble allo­ca­tion approach­es by Dr Werner:

- No allo­ca­tion (“0” allocation)

- Eco­nom­ic allo­ca­tion (range 28–388 kg CO2/t)

- Phys­i­cal allo­ca­tion (484 kg CO2/t)

- Mass allo­ca­tion (1373 kg CO2/t)

  • It is clear how the LCA results can vary and a “0” allo­ca­tion by default is not agreed to as planned in the c‑PCR.

  • The spec­i­fi­ca­tion in PCR, Part B: Cement should also be exam­ined for con­for­mi­ty with stan­dards dur­ing fur­ther pro­cess­ing of this topic.

Deci­sion no. 20181019‑h:

A “0” allo­ca­tion by default is not pos­si­ble for blast fur­nace and elec­tric fur­nace slag. An eco­nom­ic allo­ca­tion is spec­i­fied in the PCRs, where­by a “0” allo­ca­tion can in fact be select­ed and jus­ti­fied for a very low con­tri­bu­tion by these by-products.

Revis­ing the PCR, Part A

Dr Hauer has sup­ple­ment­ed the annex to PCR, Part A “Expla­na­tions and cal­cu­la­tion rules on the result indi­ca­tors and sec­tion 7.1.3.” to include an exam­ple for the future declaration:

 Pri­ma­ry energy

 SM — Use of Sec­ondary Mate­ri­als (in MJ and kg)

 FR — Mate­ri­als for Recy­cling (in MJ and kg)

 MER — Mate­ri­als for Ener­gy Recov­ery (in MJ and kg).

  • The annex is pub­lished fol­low­ing edi­to­r­i­al revi­sion, pre­sent­ed to the oth­er pro­gramme own­ers via the ECO Plat­form, and also pre­sent­ed to the Ökobau­dat group of users.

  • Pub­li­ca­tion will be fol­lowed by a tran­si­tion peri­od of 6 months for imple­men­ta­tion. Atten­tion is drawn to the fact that some EPDs are cur­rent­ly pub­lished which indi­cate the con­sump­tion of pri­ma­ry ener­gy in accor­dance with PCR, Part A (last revised in 2017).

Deci­sion no. 20181019‑k:

The annex to PCR, Part A is pub­lished fol­low­ing edi­to­r­i­al revi­sion, pre­sent­ed to the oth­er pro­gramme own­ers via the ECO Plat­form, and also pre­sent­ed to the Ökobau­dat group of users. Pub­li­ca­tion will be fol­lowed by a tran­si­tion peri­od of 6 months for implementation.

Inclu­sion of the AgBB scheme in PCRs

Deci­sion no. 20181019‑l: The table in accor­dance with the AgBB scheme 2018 is to be includ­ed in the PCRs.

Advi­so­ry Board (SVR) — Deci­sions June 2018

The IBU Advi­so­ry Board (SVR) decid­ed in its last meet­ing in June 2018 on these topics.

A sup­ple­ment in the PCR Part A

Deci­sion no. 20180629‑c: IBU as a sup­ple­ment in the PCR Part A

Use of the Euro­pean pow­er mix data for cal­cu­lat­ing the EPD results of the use phase (Mod­ule B 6) is spec­i­fied as a gen­er­al ref­er­ence sce­nario in the IBU range and region­al details are also pos­si­ble which require expla­na­tion in the EPD.

Require­ments on (par­tial­ly) auto­mat­ed soft­ware sys­tems for gen­er­at­ing and approv­ing EPDs (so-called EPD tools)

Deci­sion no. 20180629‑f:

Sec­tion 7.2 “Require­ments on (par­tial­ly) auto­mat­ed soft­ware sys­tems for gen­er­at­ing and approv­ing EPDs (so-called EPD tools)” and the accom­pa­ny­ing process instruc­tions are inte­grat­ed in the gen­er­al IBU pro­gramme instruc­tions – this deci­sion is pub­lished in advance on the IBU homepage.

Deci­sion no. 20180629‑g:

A new ver­i­fi­er is assigned for an exten­sion or new approval of an EPD tool.

PDF doc­u­ment: “Require­ments on (par­tial­ly) auto­mat­ed soft­ware sys­tems for gen­er­at­ing and approv­ing EPDs (so-called EPD tools)”

Results of the ver­i­fi­er meeting

The fol­low­ing text is delet­ed in sec­tion 5.5.2 of the PCR Part A:
If no spe­cif­ic infor­ma­tion for the R1 val­ue of the incin­er­a­tion plant is avail­able, it is assumed for Ger­many that pack­ag­ing mate­r­i­al and, if applic­a­ble, prod­uct waste from the instal­la­tion process are treat­ed ther­mal­ly in an incin­er­a­tion plant with R1<0.6. Thus, the loads from the com­bus­tion process of pack­ag­ing are to be declared in mod­ule A5, the result­ing ener­gy ben­e­fits in mod­ule D.

The fol­low­ing text is retained:
When mod­el­ling the incin­er­a­tion plant, care shall be tak­en to ensure that the inven­to­ried incin­er­a­tion plant cor­re­sponds to the assumed R1-value.

Deci­sion 20180629‑i:

The text change in sec­tion 5.5.2. of the PCR Part A is accepted.

Deci­sion no. 20180629‑j:

The CML 2001 (ver­sion 2012) remains the basis for the results in the EPD until imple­men­ta­tion of the EN 15804:2012+A1:2013/prA2.

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion of new SVR deci­sions to the verifiers

Deci­sion 20180629‑k: IBU

Ref­er­ence is reg­u­lar­ly made in the IBU newslet­ter to the SVR deci­sions. No fur­ther action is nec­es­sary here. The PCR Part A are updat­ed at least once a year in accor­dance with the deci­sions of the SVR. This takes place pri­or to the annu­al ver­i­fi­er meeting.

Advi­so­ry Board (SVR) — Deci­sions April 2018

The IBU Advi­so­ry Board (SVR) decid­ed in its last meet­ing in April 2018 on these topics.

Indi­vid­u­al­iza­tion of mod­el EPDs for the Euro­pean Chem­i­cal Union.

The SVR is unan­i­mous­ly of the opin­ion that from a tech­ni­cal point of view there are no rea­sons not to allow indi­vid­u­al­iza­tion of EU EPDs by Ger­man com­pa­nies. How­ev­er, the SVR rec­om­mends the IBU to pro­mote a real indi­vid­u­al­iza­tion (= indi­vid­ual cal­cu­la­tion) and to improve the label­ing of EPDs based on sam­ple EPDs. This would allow the user to bet­ter assess which EPD he/she is look­ing at. If nec­es­sary, con­sid­er­a­tion should be giv­en to expand­ing the exist­ing cat­e­go­ry sys­tem — here, com­pa­ny EPDs based on sam­ple EPDs are not dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed at the moment.

Deci­sion 20180420‑j:

Indi­vid­u­al­iza­tion of EU mod­el EPDs by Ger­man com­pa­nies is per­mit­ted from a tech­ni­cal point of view.

All pub­lic SVR deter­mi­na­tions have been pub­lished by the IBU.

Advi­so­ry Board (SVR) — Deci­sions Jan­u­ary 2018

The IBU Advi­so­ry Board (SVR) decid­ed in its last meet­ing in Jan­u­ary 2018 on these topics.

Incor­po­ra­tion of EN 16810 into the exist­ing PCR for floor coverings.

The PCR stan­dard of the resilient, tex­tile and lam­i­nate floor­ing indus­try (TC 134) was pub­lished in 2017 (EN 16180: Resilient, tex­tile and lam­i­nate floor cov­er­ings — Envi­ron­men­tal prod­uct dec­la­ra­tions — Prod­uct cat­e­go­riza­tion rule). The IBU has the pol­i­cy deci­sion that c‑PCRs will be adopt­ed in the IBU PCRs.

From EN 16810, the fol­low­ing rules are adopt­ed into the IBU system:

1. use­ful life

The dec­la­ra­tion of the service life of 1 year does not con­tra­dict the IBU reg­u­la­tions, there­fore this is tak­en over in the IBU PCR. In addi­tion, the fol­low­ing note must be made in the EPD: “Depend­ing on the area of use based on EN ISO 10874 , the tech­ni­cal service life rec­om­mend­ed by the man­u­fac­tur­er and the expect­ed stress on the floor by the cus­tomer, the service life can be deter­mined on a case-spe­cif­ic basis. The impact of mod­ule B2 must be cal­cu­lat­ed based on this service life to yield the total envi­ron­men­tal impact.”

2. des­ig­na­tion of bio­genic carbon

Des­ig­na­tion of bio­genic car­bon dur­ing the life cycle 1:

  • Rules as in PCR Part A and
  • Rules of EN 16485:2014 Round and sawn tim­ber — Envi­ron­men­tal prod­uct dec­la­ra­tions — Prod­uct cat­e­go­riza­tion rules for wood and wood-based mate­ri­als in construction.
  • The resource aspect of wood is to be account­ed for via the mate­r­i­al inher­ent prop­er­ties as resource extrac­tion of CO2 from the atmos­phere and the low­er heat­ing val­ue as con­sump­tion of renew­able ener­gy sources.

Des­ig­na­tion of bio­genic car­bon dur­ing the life cycle 2:

  • For sec­ondary mate­r­i­al (waste wood), the bound CO2 is con­sid­ered on the input side with the cor­re­spond­ing neg­a­tive GWP;
  • Sim­i­lar­ly, for waste wood that is recy­cled or leaves the prod­uct sys­tem to be account­ed for as sec­ondary fuel, the CO2 bound in the wood fibers to be recy­cled is account­ed for on the out­put side with the cor­re­spond­ing pos­i­tive GWP.
  • If bio­genic CO2 is account­ed for in mod­ules A1-A3 as part of the GWP, it is manda­to­ry to declare the mod­ule in which the CO2 bound in the prod­uct or pack­ag­ing is released or leaves the bal­ance area via recy­cling or as sec­ondary fuel.

Dec­la­ra­tion of bio­genic car­bon dur­ing the life cycle 3:

  • The amount of bio­genic car­bon con­tained in the bio­log­i­cal mate­r­i­al or pack­ag­ing must be declared in the mod­ule where the stored bio­genic car­bon is account­ed for as part of the GWP.
  • the ener­gy con­tent (Hu) is account­ed for as con­sump­tion of “use of renew­able sec­ondary fuels” or as “use of sec­ondary materials”.

The fol­low­ing reg­u­la­tions are not adopt­ed from EN 16810:
EN 16810 allows the dec­la­ra­tion of tox­i­c­i­ty indi­ca­tors in the EPD. The IBU has received a request from ERFMI to inte­grate these into an IBU EPD. Dr. Lehmann pro­pos­es, against the back­ground of the inte­gra­tion of ISO 21930 into the IBU Pro­gram Rules, to post­pone the deci­sion on ERFMI’s request and to com­mu­ni­cate this to ERFMI accordingly.

The EPDs for resilient, tex­tile and lam­i­nate floor­ing will addi­tion­al­ly men­tion EN 16810 as ref­er­ence in the EPD.

Deci­sion no. 20180124‑e:

Inclu­sion of EN 16810 in the exist­ing PCRs for floor­ing for the top­ics: Service life and des­ig­na­tion of bio­genic car­bon and des­ig­na­tion of EN 16810 on the cov­er sheet of the EPD for flooring.

Advi­so­ry Board (SVR) — Deci­sions Octo­ber 2017

The IBU Advi­so­ry Board (SVR) decid­ed in its last meet­ing in Octo­ber 2017 on these topics.

Deci­sion no. 20171027‑d: PCR “Cable tray sys­tems for elec­tri­cal instal­la­tions” is renamed and the scope is extend­ed to PCR Part B: Cable tray and cable ducts for elec­tron­ic installations.

PCR Part B: for coat­ings with organ­ic binders (fol­low-up cir­cu­la­tion procedure)

The SVR has the fol­low­ing com­ments on PCR Part B:

- The scope in the exist­ing PCR “Pan­els and sheets of plas­tics” should be changed for inte­ri­or applications.

- A new PCR is to be pub­lished under plas­tics for out­door applications.

Deci­sion no. 20171027‑f: After incor­po­ra­tion of the changes, the PCR can be published.

Deci­sion no. 20171027‑h: Open ques­tions from the ver­i­fi­er meet­ing (resub­mis­sion from 44th meet­ing) are clarified.

Deci­sion on asso­ci­a­tion and sam­ple EPDs (Deci­sion no. 20170712–12: Dr. Werner)

The issue of rep­re­sen­ta­tive­ness and indi­vid­u­al­iza­tion is discussed.

There are 2 lev­els of individualization:

  1. Only the cov­er sheet and pos­si­bly annex­es are changed, the dec­la­ra­tion hold­er is not changed. Pos­si­ble e.g. for mar­ket­ing pur­pos­es. Asso­ci­a­tion logo remains on cov­er sheet — are not dig­i­tized, only PDF is created.
  2. If the indi­vid­u­al­iza­tion is to go fur­ther, name­ly if the man­u­fac­tur­er wants to become dec­la­ra­tion hold­er, a pro­ce­dure as for sam­ple EPDs is to be pre­sent­ed to the SVR.

On rep­re­sen­ta­tive­ness:

- In the PCR Part B, new texts are insert­ed in Chap. 3.1 Declared unit and 3.6 Data qual­i­ty as well as in the scope of validity.

Deci­sion no. 20171027‑i:

The pro­pos­al is accept­ed by the SVR, the nec­es­sary changes in the IBU rules doc­u­ments are implemented.

Advi­so­ry Board (SVR) — Deci­sions Juli 2017

The IBU Advi­so­ry Board (SVR) decid­ed in its last meet­ing in Juli 2017 on these topics.

The scopes for the fol­low­ing PCRs have been expanded:

PCR Part B: Coat­ings with organ­ic binders:

  • Coat­ing prod­ucts may be applied as dis­per­sions, emul­sions, solu­tions, pow­der mix­tures, or as pre­formed, dried ele­ments for coat­ing surfaces

PCR Part B: Steel enam­el or acrylic bath­tubs and show­er trays.

  • The doc­u­ment applies to: Bath­tubs, show­er trays, wash­basins and van­i­ties made of com­pos­ite mate­ri­als, such as steel enam­el, acrylic and min­er­al casting.
  • Renamed to: San­i­tary ware prod­ucts made of com­pos­ite materials

Fur­ther deci­sions of the SVR from the last meeting:

Deci­sion no. 20170712‑h: The renam­ing of the indi­ca­tor ADP is imple­ment­ed in the PCRs.

Deci­sion no. 20170712‑i: The require­ment for the prod­uct def­i­n­i­tion chap­ter is changed in the PCRs.

Deci­sion no. 20170712‑k: Soft­ware tools must always declare the largest scope in the first EPD (If the tool can cal­cu­late A1-C4+D includ­ing sce­nar­ios, the first EPD from the tool must also map all these cases).

Deci­sion no. 20170712‑l: Soft­ware tools oblige that all EPDs are deliv­ered as XML file (in ILCD+EPD for­mat) to be pub­lished in IBU.data. Excep­tion is for Sys­tem II tools, here it is suf­fi­cient if a ref­er­ence prod­uct pre­sent­ed to the SVR as part of the tool release is avail­able as an XML file (The man­u­fac­tur­er makes sug­ges­tions for the ref­er­ence products).

Deci­sion no. 20170712‑n: Mod­ules B3, B4, and B5 are rel­e­vant only at the build­ing lev­el and will be iden­ti­fied as MNR in the IBU sys­tem. (They can still be declared if needed).

Deci­sion no. 20170712‑o: In mod­ule B2, the expens­es for main­te­nance, repair, etc. over the use­ful life of the prod­uct will be declared in the IBU pro­gram. This res­o­lu­tion is valid until revoked by ECO Platform.

Advi­so­ry Board (SVR) — Deci­sions March 2017

The IBU Advi­so­ry Board (SVR) decid­ed in its last meet­ing in March 2017 on these topics.

RSL Reg­u­la­tions:

Deci­sion no. 20170315‑e: The source and back­ground infor­ma­tion for declar­ing life/RSL infor­ma­tion should be described in more detail in Chap­ter 4 of the PCR Part B.

PCR Part A Supplement:

Deci­sion no. 20170315‑j: The changes in PCR Part A con­cern­ing R1 are adopt­ed (Chap­ter 5.5.6).

Deci­sion no. 20170315‑k: The pro­posed changes in PCR Part A by Ms. Schindler and Ms. Grahl are accept­ed in part after review by Dr. Wern­er and Dr. Schmincke, accept­ed in part with mod­i­fi­ca­tions, and not­ed in part.

Dec­la­ra­tion of mod­ules not rel­e­vant for the prod­uct lev­el, name­ly mod­ules B3-B5:

Deci­sion no. 20170315‑i: The SVR agrees with the pro­pos­al for the mod­ules B3-B5. Before the tech­ni­cal imple­men­ta­tion, a com­par­i­son with oth­er pro­gram hold­ers with­in the frame­work of the ÖKOBADAT user group is recommended.

With­drawn Resolutions:

Deci­sion no. 20170315‑h: The fol­low­ing res­o­lu­tions of the SVR are with­drawn:

  1. Deci­sion no. 20121004‑e: Require­ments for the prepa­ra­tion of ESDs
  2. Deci­sion no. 20140704‑c: def­i­n­i­tion of the term ESD
  3. Deci­sion no. 20150630‑e: tech­ni­cal data for declared product

f

All res­o­lu­tions of the IBU Coun­cil of Experts can be read here. We will be hap­py to send you the res­o­lu­tions on request. The annex to PCR Part A for ReUse prod­ucts is avail­able on request and at epd-online.com.