By mass bal­ance approach (MBA) IBU under­stands the vir­tu­al allo­ca­tion of basic mate­ri­als (e.g. bio­mass) or oth­er resources (e.g. ener­gy) to a prod­uct. This is also referred to as “pooled resources”, which only rep­re­sent a sub­set of the resources used and are avail­able in lim­it­ed quan­ti­ties, but are allo­cat­ed 100% to a spe­cif­ic prod­uct in the course of the calculation.

 

The approach test­ed by the IBU in a pilot phase to include the bio­mass bal­ance (BMB) in an EPD is cur­rent­ly sus­pend­ed. The back­ground is the deci­sion of the ECO-Plat­form of 27 Jan­u­ary 2023 (https://tinyurl.com/4k9t2tba) not to allow the mass bal­ance approach (MBA) in EPDs at Euro­pean lev­el for the time being. (*)

 

Although the pilot phase has run suc­cess­ful­ly, the IBU as a found­ing mem­ber of the ECO Plat­form will fol­low this deci­sion. This means that all EPDs which fol­low an MBA approach will not be pub­lished as EPD (this does not apply to already pub­lished EPDs of the pilot phase). How­ev­er, since the IBU does not want to coun­ter­act this approach and the result­ing trans­for­ma­tion of the indus­try to achieve the cli­mate tar­gets, there is from now on the pos­si­bil­i­ty to present MBA in annex­es ver­i­fied by inde­pen­dent third par­ties. Such an annex will be sim­i­lar in con­tent to an EPD and can be con­vert­ed into a full EPD upon re-approval of the method. There will be no addi­tion­al costs for the ver­i­fi­ca­tion of such an annex.

 

In par­al­lel, the IBU (Board and Advi­so­ry Board) will con­tin­ue to address the issue and work on more far-reach­ing solu­tions. Fur­ther­more, the IBU has estab­lished a work­ing group on ECO plat­form lev­el to define a set of rules for the MBA method­ol­o­gy (here our already devel­oped and test­ed rules are the basis).

Fur­ther­more, the IBU will send a report on the suc­cess­ful pilot phase in the course of the CPR acquis process to the rel­e­vant stakeholders.

Fur­ther­more, the IBU par­tic­i­pates as an expert in the rel­e­vant stan­dard­iza­tion, espe­cial­ly in the future TS/TR to EN15941 which deals with the MBA methodology.

 

(*) This does not mean, how­ev­er, that the con­sid­er­a­tion of the pur­chased green elec­tric­i­ty can no longer be count­ed, it can still be count­ed pro­por­tion­al­ly to the total amount of elec­tric­i­ty used in the defined pro­duc­tion line (pro­vid­ed that the pur­chas­es com­ply with the rules of the PCR Part A of the IBU).

 

If you have any fur­ther ques­tions, please con­tact the IBU office.