Updating CAT 3 declarations
The National Environmental Database contains three categories of environmental declarations. Category 1 and 2 declarations are owned by manufacturers, suppliers and sectors. Category 3 declarations are owned by Stichting National Environmental Database. The Stichting is also responsible for producing, publishing and updating these declarations. These category 3 declarations are used when no category 1 or 2 declarations are available.
C&U
For correct calculation of construction works and to enable sustainable design choices, it is important that environmental declarations are up to date. Currently, some of the category 3 declarations are dated. In a study on installation data, it became apparent that there is not always a complete description of all necessary components of an installation, which means that the environmental impact is underestimated. This also makes it difficult to make a comparison of the environmental impact of installations.
For this reason, the ‘Updating environmental data of construction work installations in the NMD for a uniform concept framework in both the construction and installation sectors’ project started at the end of 2022.
In 2023, this should lead to:
- Uniform definitions of the functional descriptions NL/SfB (systems) and the subsystems (elements, components, devices, etc.) to be named within them based on proportionality[1] as contribution to the environmental impact of the system or collection and state of the art.
- Reassessment and where necessary formulating Cat. 3 envrironmental declarations of systems and priority sub-systems within these.
[1] This concerns, for example a cable or filter. These products are too detailed to be offered in the calculation tools. In the current design it is also not possible to include them in the NMD.
Scheduling
The scheduling will be developed further in consultation with clients. The aim is to achieve the complete update before the end of 2023.
Infrastructure project
In recent months hundreds of category 3 Infrastructure project declarations underwent review. The result not only provided an update of the current ECI calculation of the Infrastructure project declarations, but also resulted in quality improvements and an expansion of the NMD database.
The reviews are based on an update of the underlying LCA reports. For a large number of declaratiobs, the update resulted in a change to the ECI calculation. Changes in the ECI calculation took place, for example, due to another decomposition of the product or process, a different functional unit or the addition of a processing scenario. As well as updating existing declarations, new Infrastructure project envrironmental declarations were also added to the NMD. This partly concerns variants of existing declarations.
Category 3 Infrastructure project declarations are used for design and procurement based on the ECI value. They are of major importance during procurement processes in both facilitating good assessment of different products as well as setting pragmatic upper and lower ECI value levels to enable the award criteria of tenders to be determined.
