Shane Mulligan and Jason Saunderson of Concrete BC believe Canadian concrete producers are in danger of not being adequately prepared for projects that may require an environmental product declaration (EPD).
“EPDs are becoming more common, but not all concrete producers realize it,” says Mulligan. “They’ve got to find out fast.”
At their presentation at the Canadian Concrete Expo 2025 (February 12-13), Mulligan and Saunderson will explain the features of EPDs and why concrete producers and specifiers should develop EPDs for their facilities.
The title of their presentation is Motivating Concrete Producers and Specifiers to Buy Into Type III EPD.
Mulligan, who is chairman of environment and climate change at Concrete BC, and Saunderson, who is the organization’s executive director, say EPDs are like nutrition labels for construction materials.
They show the environmental impact by weight or volume across a range of impact categories, such as “global warming potential,” which compares the global warming impacts of different gases.
Mulligan, who is also the sustainability and technical marketing manager in the Calgary office of Heidelberg Materials, says the number of procurement policies in Canada that require EPDs has been growing.
“EPDs have taken off in North American concrete,” says Mulligan. “They enable concrete producers to measure and show the amount of embodied carbon compared to other concrete products.”
The biggest buyers of concrete in Canada are in the public sector and many government bodies have passed carbon use bylaws.
For example, says Mulligan, the City of Vancouver is proposing that all highrise buildings over 1,800 square metres in area will need to demonstrate a 10 per cent reduction in embodied carbon at a whole-building level.
Mulligan says there are two types of EPDs.
“One is an industry average, like Concrete BC, and the other provincial concrete associations,” he says. “The other is for a particular facility.”
The quality of the cement used to make the concrete is about the same for all concrete producers.
“The main variable that determines a facility’s or producer’s EPD is the distance from where the concrete is produced to where it is poured, and the distance the aggregate’s source is from where the concrete is produced,” says Mulligan.
“Generally speaking, EPDs for concrete and other building materials support whole building life-cycle assessments, which tally the embodied carbon impacts of a building, and concrete is a significant contributor to the total,” he says. “Fifty per cent is a good rule of thumb as an average.”
In addition to public sector owners, some private owners want to reduce the impact of embodied carbon either because of their environmental social governance principles, or because they are pursuing LEED or Zero Carbon Building Standard certification, which award credits for reducing embodied carbon impacts. In either case, these are voluntary measures, says Mulligan.
“Where mandatory compliance measures are concerned, there are a growing number of policies under development in Canada,” he says.
Many of them specifically target concrete. There are several reasons why.
“Concrete is a high impact material, and there are many ways to make significant reductions in embodied carbon,” says Mulligan. “In addition, EPDs provide an accurate and transparent record of the impacts of concrete and they are straightforward to generate.”
Concrete BC has developed industry average EPD data for its members.
Creating facility-specific EPDs requires concrete producers to undertake a detailed data gathering exercise that can take up to six months to complete.
To help facilitate the process, Concrete BC produced a video for producers that explain the importance of EPDs and how to generate their own.
Concrete BC has also been promoting the adoption and use of EPDs by specifiers.
To that end, it has been hosting a series of Lunch and Learn seminars, as well as producing a video that explains why EPDs are important and what they need to know about it.
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