Towards a Complete Tool Chain for Eco-Balancing Governmental Buildings

With the Assessment System for Sustainable Buildings for Federal Buildings (BNB), Germany is pioneering the implementation of certification systems for Sustainable Buildings in Europe. Using BNB methodology and tools, building products are not assessed as individual products, but looked at within the context of the entire building and its parts. The most important impacts of the building on the global environment (i.e. environmental burdens like ozone depletion or consumption of resources like energy and water) are assessed by means of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology and are calculated according to the Type III Environmental Product Declarations (EPD) standard for building products described in ISO 14025 and EN 15804. This paper will describe the tool chain needed to first calculate EPD data sets in LCA tools, store them in a central repository, the ÖKOBAU.DAT, and how the EPD data sets can then be used in other tools for calculating the environmental footprint of an entire building.