Mutu­al Recognitions

Mutu­al Recognitions2022-05-18T21:55:09+02:00

Mutu­al Recog­ni­tions of EPDs

Par­al­lel to its efforts of har­mo­niz­ing EPDs with­in Europe at the ECO Plat­form, IBU fos­ters the process of mutu­al recog­ni­tion on a bilat­er­al lev­el togeth­er with select­ed Euro­pean and inter­na­tion­al pro­gramme hold­ers accord­ing to EN 15804.

Here­by, IBU intends to save its mem­bers mon­ey and time when issu­ing their EPDs with oth­ers pro­gramme holders.

So far, eight mutu­al agree­ments between IBU und oth­er pro­gramme hold­ers regard­ing EPDs were finalized:

Recog­ni­tion of EPDs by IBU:

EPDs by IBU are cre­at­ed in accor­dance with the Euro­pean stan­dard EN 15804 and are there­fore gen­er­al­ly rec­og­nized through­out Europe (and beyond). Mutu­al recog­ni­tion by dif­fer­ent pro­gram providers does not mean that the EPD can only then be used in a par­tic­u­lar coun­try. The main effect of a mutu­al recog­ni­tion is that an EPD pub­lished at the IBU (and in the ECO por­tal of the ECO Plat­form) is also list­ed in the data­base of the oth­er pro­gram holder.

For these list­ings, there are addi­tion­al require­ments for some pro­grams such as the French and the North Amer­i­can, which are tak­en into account in the con­text of the mutu­al recognition.

BRE Group (Great Britain)
BRE Group (Great Britain)
EPD Italy / ICMQ (Italy)
EPD Italy / ICMQ (Italy)
Global EPD/Aenor (Spain)
Glob­al EPD/Aenor (Spain)
EPD Danmark
EPD Dan­mark
EPD-Norge (Norway)
EPD-Norge (Nor­way)
UL Environment (North America)
UL Envi­ron­ment (North America)
The International EPD System (Schweden)
The Inter­na­tion­al EPD Sys­tem (Schwe­den)
INIES (France)
INIES (France)

Mutu­al Recog­ni­tion with France

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Tem­po­rary sus­pen­sion of mutu­al recog­ni­tion with INIES

 

The mutu­al recog­ni­tion imple­ment­ed by IBU with the French pro­gram oper­a­tor INIES for years referred to EN 15804+A1. A con­ver­sion of the rules to the cur­rent ver­sion EN 15804+A2 will be car­ried out in France in Octo­ber 2022, but the new pro­gram rules have not yet been pub­lished. This results in the fol­low­ing sit­u­a­tion for the trans­mis­sion of EPDs pub­lished by IBU:

EPDs accord­ing to EN 15804+A1:
For these EPDs, the exist­ing set of rules is still applic­a­ble until the end of Sep­tem­ber. Due to the lim­it­ed avail­abil­i­ty of ver­i­fiers approved by the French pro­gram oper­a­tor, time­ly pub­li­ca­tion of new­ly sub­mit­ted projects can­not be guaranteed.

EPDs accord­ing to EN 15804+A2:
Ver­i­fi­ca­tion is cur­rent­ly not pos­si­ble for these EPDs due to the lack of spec­i­fi­ca­tions for the French program.

For these rea­sons, the office feels com­pelled to dis­con­tin­ue the pre­vi­ous­ly grant­ed sup­port for the trans­fer of EPDs to INIES with imme­di­ate effect and for an indef­i­nite peri­od. Exist­ing projects with promised ver­i­fi­ca­tion are not affected.

The pub­li­ca­tion of the nor­ma­tive basis for France has been announced for mid-July, but it is unclear how long imple­men­ta­tion by the pro­gram oper­a­tor will take. We will inform you as soon as possible.

Dec­la­ra­tion hold­ers who are inter­est­ed in hav­ing their EPDs rec­og­nized by INIES are advised to pre­pare a pub­li­ca­tion accord­ing to EN 15804+A2 in any case. Accord­ing to the cur­rent sta­tus, an FDES must be cre­at­ed and its dec­la­ra­tion made direct­ly in the French pro­gram after ver­i­fi­ca­tion by a ver­i­fi­er list­ed at INIES. Wait­ing times are to be expected.

Mutu­al Recog­ni­tion with Great Britain

breIBU BREDur­ing the trade fair BAU 2017 in Munich, IBU has signed a new mutu­al recog­ni­tion with BRE from the UK in the per­son of Man­ag­ing Direc­tor Dr. Burkhart Lehmann and IBU Pres­i­dent Prof. Dr. Horst Bossenmayer.

For BRE, Dr. Sharmir Ghum­ra, BRE Direc­tor of Sus­tain­able Prod­ucts, signed the mutu­al recog­ni­tion at the IBU booth at BAU 2017. He said: “BRE is proud to have reached this mile­stone with IBU for the mutu­al recog­ni­tion of EPD. As lead­ing organ­i­sa­tions for the pro­vi­sion of third-par­ty-ver­i­fied EPD to EN 15804 it is a sig­nif­i­cant step for­wards for the pro­lif­er­a­tion of EPD. Indus­try can now have EPDs ver­i­fied by BRE or IBU with the assur­ance that their EPD can be recog­nised in either the BRE or IBU list­ing service. We look for­ward to devel­op­ing our rela­tion­ship with IBU over the com­ing years. – Dr Shamir Ghum­ra, BRE Direc­tor of Sus­tain­able Products.”

 

 

Mutu­al Recog­ni­tion with Italy

EPD ItalyDur­ing the trade fair BAU 2017 in Munich, IBU has signed a new mutu­al recog­ni­tion with the Ital­ian EPD-Pro­gram EPD Italy in the per­son of Man­ag­ing Direc­tor Dr. Burkhart Lehmann and IBU Pres­i­dent Prof. Dr. Horst Bossenmayer.

ICMQ IBU

 

EPD Italy was rep­re­sent­ed by the Pres­i­dent of ICMQ, Prof. Enri­co Das­sori, Loren­zo Ors­eni­go (Diret­tore Gen­erale) and Ugo Pan­nu­ti (Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Advi­sor). In order to encour­age the har­mo­niza­tion, a man­u­fac­tur­er has to be able to pro­vide its EPD in all rat­ing schemes in Europe. This mutu­al recog­ni­tion is a big advan­tage for Ital­ian and Ger­man Man­u­fac­tur­ers that want to declare the envi­ron­men­tal char­ac­ter­is­tics of their prod­ucts through the Envi­ron­men­tal Prod­uct Dec­la­ra­tion, in Europe.”, said Prof. Dassori.

Mutu­al Recog­ni­tion with Spain

AenorAENORIn ear­ly 2015, with the sign­ing of offi­cial doc­u­ments by IBU Man­ag­ing Direc­tor Dr Burkhart Lehmann and Aveli­no Brito, the CEO of AENOR, the process of estab­lish­ing mutu­al recog­ni­tion with AENOR was suc­cess­ful­ly con­clud­ed. This agree­ment was the end result of a state­ment of intent that had been signed by AENOR and the IBU in 2013 in Madrid.

 

Mutu­al Recog­ni­tion with EPD Dan­mark (DTI)

blankSign­ing the agree­ment of mutu­al recog­ni­tion of EPD pro­grammes with the Dan­ish pro­gramme hold­er DTI (Dan­ish Tech­no­log­i­cal Insti­tute) meant a high­light for IBU in the begin­ning of 2015 at the trade fair BAU.

Unterzeichnung der gegenseitigen Anerkennung von IBU und EPD danmark auf der BAU 2015

Math­ias Sehest­ed Høeg Kem­n­er from DTI explained: “The co-oper­a­tion with IBU is an impor­tant step for our dec­la­ra­tion own­ers. They can now bring their EPDs to the Ger­man mar­ket, due to mutu­al recog­ni­tion with IBU. At the same time, we are look­ing for­ward to pub­lish­ing Ger­man EPDs issued by IBU here in Den­mark in our “Dan­mark Sys­tem”, and there­by advanc­ing EPDs Europe-wide”.

Mutu­al Recog­ni­tion with Norway

blankIn the course of the Annu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing of EPD Norge in June 2014 IBU’s Man­ag­ing Direc­tor Dr. Burkhart Lehmann and EPD Norge’s Man­ag­ing Direc­tor Dagfinn Malnes signed the con­tract for the mutu­al recog­ni­tion of the two EPD-Pro­grammes. With this dec­la­ra­tion hold­ers of EPDs ver­i­fied by IBU can have their EPDs recog­nised in Nor­way by the Pro­gramme oper­a­tor “The Nor­we­gian EPD Foun­da­tion (EPD-Norge)” with­out hav­ing to under­go a fur­ther, com­pre­hen­sive ver­i­fi­ca­tion process.

EPD Norge IBUEN 15804 +A1 is the com­mon basis for the mutu­al recog­ni­tion. Dur­ing the pre­lim­i­nary stages Anne R. Røn­ning for EPD-Norge and Dr. Eva Schmincke for IBU in par­tic­u­lar, worked on deter­min­ing the para­me­ters for the mutu­al recog­ni­tion of EPDs. In order to pub­lish an IBU EPD in the Nor­we­gian Pro­gramme, the EPD needs to be in Eng­lish and addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion has to be com­piled and added in an attachment.

 

Mutu­al Recog­ni­tion with North America

Gegenseitige Anerekennung UL IBUFol­low­ing the sign­ing of a state­ment of intent in Jan­u­ary 2013 at the world’s lead­ing indus­try trade fair, BAU, the IBU nego­ti­at­ed mutu­al recog­ni­tion of Envi­ron­men­tal Prod­uct Dec­la­ra­tions (EPDs) with the North Amer­i­can pro­gramme own­er, UL Envi­ron­ment. This recog­ni­tion was insti­tut­ed at the end of 2013.

Recog­ni­tion in the North Amer­i­can mar­ket is espe­cial­ly impor­tant for mem­bers of the IBU, because the Amer­i­can build­ing cer­ti­fi­ca­tion sys­tem, LEED, in its lat­est ver­sion (v4), for the first time awards cred­its to build­ing projects that incor­po­rate prod­ucts that have an EPD.

The con­trac­tu­al agree­ment was pre­ced­ed by near­ly a year of nego­ti­a­tions. IBU’s tech­ni­cal expert, Dr Eva Schminke, worked with Paul Firth from UL Envi­ron­ment to estab­lish the con­di­tions of the col­lab­o­ra­tion. The two, both experts in life cycle assess­ments and sus­tain­able build­ing, agreed, among oth­er things, upon a stan­dard­i­s­a­tion of the ver­i­fi­ca­tion process, which would assure com­pa­ra­ble qual­i­ty of life cycle assess­ments, ensur­ing that they meet with the guide­lines set forth in EN 15804.

UL EnvironmentMan­u­fac­tur­ers who wish to have their IBU-EPDs incor­po­rat­ed by UL Envi­ron­ment must pro­vide addi­tion­al doc­u­men­ta­tion on the impact indi­ca­tors from the life cycle assess­ments, on the basis of the TRACI fac­tors that are com­mon­ly used in the USA. For exist­ing EPDS, the life cycle assess­ment that has already been cre­at­ed may be used to obtain this addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion. For new EPDs, the eval­u­a­tion need­ed for TRACI require­ments should be inte­grat­ed into the back­ground report direct­ly dur­ing the cre­ation of the life cycle assessment.

“Our mem­bers now have a very easy way to present their EPDS on the Amer­i­can mar­ket”, explained IBU Man­ag­ing Direc­tor Dr Burkhart Lehmann, in describ­ing the advan­tages of this col­lab­o­ra­tion. “This not only saves mon­ey, but also increas­es the val­ue of the IBU EPDs.” The IBU is par­tic­u­lar­ly pleased that it was pos­si­ble to enter into the agree­ment with UL Envi­ron­ment on the basis of the stan­dards set forth in EN 15804. “It can­not be tak­en for grant­ed that an Amer­i­can organ­i­sa­tion will agree to fol­low Euro­pean stan­dards”, con­tin­ued Dr Lehmann, “but we were able to con­vince UL Envi­ron­ment of the qual­i­ties that are inher­ent in the Euro­pean con­cept of sustainability”.

 

Mutu­al Recog­ni­tion with Sweden

blankEPD International

 

 

 

The IBU’s first inter­na­tion­al agree­ment was signed in 2013 at the BAU trade fair in Munich: a con­trac­tu­al agree­ment for mutu­al recog­ni­tion was there­by estab­lished with the Swedish EPD pro­gramme “The Inter­na­tion­al EPD®-System”. Own­ers of IBU dec­la­ra­tions have since then had the oppor­tu­ni­ty, for a flat reg­is­tra­tion fee, to co-pub­lish their EPDs on the Swedish EPD pro­gram web­site – www.environdec.com.