Global warming potential data analysis from environmental product declarations

The reduction of greenhouse gas emissions has become the focus of strategies to mitigate global warming. Current research generally quantifies a product’s carbon footprint by life cycle assessment (LCA). Some use Environmental Product Declarations (EPD) as the source of life cycle inventory data. However, the understanding of how carbon footprints are distributed across a product’s life cycle stages remains limited. Insufficient number of studies assessed the LCA results based on a large number of EPDs. This study retrieves more than 16,000 EPDs across 9 EPD libraries for data quality evaluation and LCA results analysis. Data inspection and carbon distribution analysis are conducted with a focus on Global Warming Potential (GWP). Results indicate that there is an imbalanced number of available EPDs across sectors, with the building and construction sector having the highest data availability. The limited coverage beyond the production stage, such as the use phase in the LCA scope, is identified. Within a product’s life cycle, the production phase, especially raw material, significantly drives greenhouse emissions across most sectors, accounting for over 60% of GWP within the production phase, while the transport phase accounts for the least. The identification of greenhouse gas emissions distribution patterns aids with enhancing the strategies on carbon footprint mitigation. The evaluation of EPDs datasets provides scalable fundamentals for using EPD as the source of LCA data analysis and evaluation. • More than 16,000 Environmental Product Declarations retrieved and analyzed. • Major contributor to Global Warming Potential is Production stage, Raw Material. • Germany and Nordic countries leading Environmental Product Declaration availability.