Critical Issues When Comparing Whole Building & Building Product Environmental Performance
Environmental Product Declaration (EPD), Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)
MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub’s paper aims to address critical issues and make recommendations to practitioners and those developing guidance to enable more robust comparisons of building products and whole buildings. The paper classifies critical issues when comparing building and building product environmental performance into two categories: system boundaries and analytical approach. The paper recognizes the desire to perform comparisons today that cannot be put off until methodologies advance further and offers two kinds of recommendations: current practice and future advances.