Carbon Footprint in Construction Materials: How to Calculate It and Where to Start

If you manufacture or distribute construction materials (concrete, steel, insulation, ceramics, paints, glass, aluminium profiles...) it is very likely that in recent months you have started receiving questions about the environmental impact of your products. And if you haven’t been asked yet, the context ahead will make them inevitable.

The construction sector is in the midst of a profound transformation in sustainability. Large developers, construction companies with sustainable building targets, and public tenders are starting to request something very specific: verifiable data on the carbon footprint of the materials they purchase.

They don’t want generic sustainability commitments — they want numbers. And those numbers must be accompanied by methodology and documentation. This article explains exactly what they will ask of you and how to prepare to respond.

Why the construction sector is under pressure

Buildings are responsible for approximately 40% of energy consumption and 36% of CO₂ emissions in Europe. A significant portion of those emissions does not come from the building’s use, but from the manufacturing of the materials it is built with — what is known as embodied carbon.

This means that a developer who wants to genuinely reduce their footprint must necessarily look at the materials they use. And that directly affects you as a manufacturer or supplier of those materials.

The pressure comes from several fronts simultaneously: the EU building regulation (the revision of the Energy Efficiency Directive and the future low-emission buildings framework), the Digital Product Passport which will affect construction materials, green procurement criteria in public tenders, and sustainable building certification standards such as LEED, BREEAM and DGNB, which already require environmental impact data from materials.

What they will ask of you, exactly

This is where many companies get lost. The request can come in many different forms, but in essence it almost always asks for one of these two things, or both at once:

An EPD (Environmental Product Declaration)

The EPD (Environmental Product Declaration) is the standard document in the construction sector for communicating the environmental impact of a product throughout its lifecycle. It is the equivalent of what in other sectors would be the product carbon footprint, but in a specific format, regulated by the EN 15804 standard, and which must be verified by an independent third party and registered in a recognised database.

An EPD includes several environmental impact indicators (not just CO₂, but also water consumption, waste generation, resource depletion) and covers the different phases of the product lifecycle: from the extraction of raw materials to end of life, through manufacturing and transport.

Embodied carbon data for a specific project

Sometimes the client does not ask for a full EPD, but for emissions data from modules A1–A3 (raw material extraction, transport to factory, and manufacturing) expressed in kg of CO₂ equivalent per unit of product. This is what they need to calculate the embodied carbon of the building they are constructing.

If you have a valid EPD, this data is already there. If you don’t, you’ll need to calculate it another way, and the credibility of unverified data is always lower.

The lifecycle modules most commonly requested

The EN 15804 standard divides the lifecycle of a construction material into modules. The ones most frequently appearing in requests are:

• A1–A3 (product): raw material extraction, transport to factory and manufacturing process. This is the core of what is almost always requested.
• A4 (transport to site): emissions from transporting your product from your plant to the client’s construction site.
• C (end of life): demolition, transport and treatment of the material at the end of its useful life. An increasing number of tenders include this.
• D (beyond the lifecycle): potential for reuse, recycling or energy recovery. Optional in many cases, but viewed positively.

If you are responding to a request for the first time, focus on A1–A3. It is the minimum scope accepted by almost any client and a reasonable starting point for any company.

What data you need to collect to get started

Regardless of whether you are going to produce a full EPD or a more basic calculation, the input data is similar. What you will need, per unit of product manufactured:

• Consumption of raw materials and their origin (how much of each material, where it comes from).
• Energy consumption in the manufacturing process, broken down by energy type (electricity, gas, fuel...).
• Transport data for raw materials to your plant.
• Waste generated in the production process and how it is managed.
• If applicable, packaging and finished product transport data.

The usual problem is not that this data doesn’t exist, but that it is scattered across different departments and systems, and no one has consolidated it with a product footprint calculation in mind.

If this sounds familiar, the supplier guide from Manglai covers exactly how to organise this process: which data is essential, which can be approximated in a first phase, and how to build a traceable and defensible calculation without disrupting your operations.

The difference between having the data and having an EPD

Having the data calculated internally and having a registered EPD are not the same thing, and it is important to understand the difference.

An internal calculation without verification may be enough to respond to initial client requests, for less demanding tenders, or to have a baseline estimate. But for building certifications such as LEED or BREEAM, for public tenders with green procurement criteria, or for clients who need auditable data, a verified EPD is the expected standard.

The natural path is to first calculate, then structure the process, and once the calculation is solid and repeatable, take the step of external verification and EPD registration. Trying to produce an EPD without first having the internal process organised is the most expensive and slowest way to reach the same destination.

The step that makes the difference

The question is not whether you will need to certify the carbon footprint of your materials. The question is whether you will be prepared when they ask you, or whether you will lose time and opportunities reacting to each request from scratch.

The companies that get ahead do not do so because they have more resources. They do so because they understand that structuring this process once is far more efficient than improvising it every time a new request arrives.

If you want to understand exactly how to start, which data is a priority, and how to build a first calculation that can withstand an audit, the Manglai supplier guide gives you the full roadmap. Designed for industrial companies that need results without unnecessary complications.