Good afternoon. Welcome to PCI's webinar series. Today's presentation is Environmental Product Declarations. My name is Royce Covington, Manager of Member Services at PCI, and I'll be a moderator for this session. Before I turn the controls over to our presenters for today, I have a few introductory items to note. Earlier today, we sent a reminder email to all registered attendees that included a handout of today's presentation. Please note that the handout has been updated since this afternoon's reminder email. That handout can be found in the Handouts section of your webinar pane. If you cannot download the handout, please email PCI Marketing at marketing at pci.org. Note that all attendee lines are muted. The GoToWebinar Toolbox has an area for you to raise your hand. If you raise your hand, you will receive a private chat message from me. If you have a question, please type it into the questions pane where I'll be keeping track of them to read during the Q&A period. Also, a pop-up survey will appear at the webinar after it ends. Today's presentation will be recorded and uploaded to the PCI eLearning Center. Questions related to specific products or publications will be addressed at the end of the presentation. PCI is a registered provider of AIA CES, but today's presentation does not contain content that has been endorsed by AIA. Today's presentation is non-CEU. Our presenters for today are Jared Brewe, Vice President of Technical Services at PCI, and Emily Lorenz, Consulting Engineer. I'll now hand the controls over so that we can begin our presentation. Thanks, Royce. All right. Good to be with everyone today. I know that you guys are getting tons of questions about environmental product declarations, so we thought it'd be a good idea to run through some basic information about EPDs, then talk about some of the different resources that PCI has for you already, and we can get into some more in-depth conversation a little bit about EPDs and what your specifiers or clients or owners are asking for, help you navigate those waters. And then finally, we're going to talk about what some of the resources that PCI is looking to develop in the near future here, and some that are, you know, in process, just waiting for final approval. So we have a lot to cover, and I'm going to go ahead and get started with some basic sustainability concepts. Now, we're going to talk about a lot of acronyms today, and I'm going to define these a couple of times for you. But I thought that we should start just at the very beginning and get everyone kind of on the same page when I start talking about these different concepts and acronyms. So the first one we're going to hear a lot about is LCA. LCA stands for Life Cycle Assessment. I'm going to go into some detail today about what that is, how you go about it, why it's important, and how it relates to both a PCR, product category rule, and an EPD or an environmental product declaration. Now, long story short, you need both an LCA and a PCR in order to develop an EPD. But we are going to break it down for you so that it's not as confusing, hopefully. Now, there's a couple of other large overarching concepts when it comes to the scope of what we're trying to do an assessment of. And those concepts are cradle to gate and cradle to grave. So when we talk about looking at the environmental impact on a cradle to gate basis, we're talking about from a precaster's perspective, all of the upstream material suppliers that you have, the transportation that it takes to get those raw materials to your plant, and everything that happens within your plant boundary. That would be a cradle to gate assessment. When you move on to a cradle to gate grave or a full LCA assessment of a building or the life of a precast component as it moves through its full life, you're looking at what happens when you take components from the individual manufacturers and take them to the project site, what it takes to erect those into the structure, any maintenance and upkeep or replacement that's required during the use phase. And then what happens at the end of life? Do we take those components back? Do we crush them? Do we reuse them on a separate facility? So that would be more of a cradle to grave analysis. For the most part right now, where we are in the world of EPDs, we're largely talking about cradle to gate. And I'll talk a little bit more about why that is in some future slides. And I think it's also important to talk about when we talk about sustainability, you know, we're getting these requests for EPDs, and we're getting these requests for EPDs, not for all the environmental impacts that are reported, but for one specific one. And that's GWP, or global warming potential. And what we don't want to do is lose sight of the fact that sustainability does have three pillars. When we design for sustainability, we're supposed to be taking into account all of the social impacts, all of the economic impacts, and all of the environmental impacts, and balancing all of those impacts to create the greatest good, or the least worst possibility. And so something to keep in mind as we get very, very narrowly focused on one environmental concept is that it is useful to try and step back and consider our choices and our design decisions in terms of this larger, more holistic, more integrated perspective. And frequently, we think about sustainability in terms of sustainable development. So in the construction industry, a lot of times we are, we're building things, right? We're wanting to develop land, or communities, or buildings, or infrastructure. And we want to do that to truly be sustainable. We want to do that in terms of meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. And that definition comes from the Brundtland Report, which is one of the first IPCC reports that were issued back in 1987, before, you know, I think we're on the 26th version of those reports now. But back at the very beginning, you know, the goal was always to make sure that we were taking care of those around us, the society, making sure that we're conserving resources. And so we need to kind of keep that bigger picture in mind. When it comes to other environmental concepts, so we are going to talk mainly just about environmental concepts today, and even more specifically about embodied carbon and GWP. But when it comes to concepts related to lifecycle, one of the useful things that we have is this chart that comes from ISO 21930. That ISO standard that I mentioned is the one that governs the creation of EPDs. And what's great about it is that it's useful to visualize all of the environmental impacts and kind of categorize them into the different lifecycle stages. So from left to right, if you if you look across the top there, you see alphanumeric letters and numbers corresponding to the different lifecycle stages and modules. So in this, on the very top row, there are the top row of boxes, there are four main stages, the production stage, the construction stage, the use stage, and the end of life stage. And each of these major stages is broken into smaller modules. So the the boxes that are mostly vertical, and with the the text turned to the side there. So each of those modules, A1, A2, and A3, they make up the production stage, the construction stage is A4 and A5, and so on. So if we focus on the production stage, we can know that that is a cradle to gate. Let's see if this, yes, okay. So in the cradle to gate analysis, this is when we're looking at, as I mentioned already, we're looking at in A1 the extraction and upstream processing of all of the raw materials that might go into your products. A2 is any transportation related to getting those individual products to your construction, or to your plant. And then A3 is any impacts that are attributed to your plant itself. And when we move on to a cradle to grave, then we get this whole big picture where we have to take into account the impacts of the full lifecycle of that product, or whatever the subject of the assessment is. So back to LCA, I mentioned that it would come up again. So LCA stands for Lifecycle Assessment, and it is the method that we use in order to determine environmental impacts in our designs, in our choices, in our products. It's a tool that can be used on a very small, limited scale, and on a very wide, broad scale. So the tool itself is governed by a couple of ISO standards. Those ISO standards say that LCA is conducted in four steps. The goal and scope, which, as you might imagine, is pretty self-explanatory, but it's telling you how broad is it? How many different impact categories are you looking at? Where are you drawing your boundary of your assessment? So that's the first step. We then go into Lifecycle Inventory, where we're gathering data. That data, that either primary or background data, is then used to and characterized into different environmental impacts using characterization methods in the Lifecycle Impact Assessment stage. And then at the end of your LCA, you do an interpretation, and some useful things you can get out of that are, what pieces of your production are contributing the most to your different environmental impacts? And LCA will tell you that. Is it the aggregate that you're trucking from 2,000 miles away? We already know that cement does carry a heavy burden. So depending on which cement manufacturer you use, it can influence the environmental impact of your product. But all of those things are figured out by doing an LCA. Now, when we want to create an EPD, an Environmental Product Declaration, now this is what the specifiers are asking for. This is what owners are asking for. An EPD is basically just an executive summary of a full lifecycle assessment. So you have to do that LCA in order to get the results, in order to produce an EPD. And when you do that, the value in the EPD, there are several, one is that it's based on LCA. The second is that an EPD, by its nature, has to be third-party verified. So the owner has assurances that I'm not just Joe Schmo saying that this is what my environmental impacts are. I've done a full assessment, it's been independently verified, and this is the summary of results. Now, the product category role comes in, and this is an important piece for pre-casters, especially. Now, all EPDs are developed with the use of a PCR, instead of product category rules, and there are PCRs for different products. Makes sense, right? So there's a PCR for pre-cast, there's a PCR for ready mix, there's a PCR for masonry, and a PCR for pretty much any major building product right now, steel, wood, you name it. Now, one of the key things about the product category rule is that it sets some basic assumptions on your goal and scope, how you perform your LCA, so that if pre-caster A and pre-caster B both do an LCA, and they both do it according to the PCR and produce an EPD, there's a greater likelihood that they followed most of the same methodology. Of course, there's always still differences, but it's one of the main reasons that PCRs exist. And one of the main takeaways that you should take away from this, and I'll probably emphasize this again later, is that you cannot, ISO rules standards do not allow you to compare EPDs that are created by different PCRs. So if you have a specifier who is trying to use a PCR for something other than pre-cast, or asking you to conform to a PCR that isn't the pre-cast PCR, you technically can't do it according to the ISO standards. So it's an important thing that you need to pay attention to, just look at what the background PCR is and what the requirements are there. Okay, so when we perform our LCA, you know, I have this very sophisticated building drawing here that I did myself, that is just an example, to give you an example of the kind of data that we collect when we do an LCA. So once we've already established, all right, we're going to do an LCA for a product, in this case we're going to do an LCA for this building, we then have to collect data. And we have to collect a lot of data, and it's usually the most time-consuming part for the entity that is doing the LCA, the one that's commissioning the study. Because for you or I to collect the data, it's just a lot, it's not difficult, it's just a lot of data. And what we're trying to do, the more sophisticated the system, the more life cycle stages that are included, the more data that has to be collected. And so if we're in the case of this building, that it looks like we want to do an LCA for the full cradle to grave, so we want to go from extraction of raw materials, processing those materials and transporting them to the job site, assembling them on site, the full use phase, all the operations and maintenance and end-of-life disposal, we're going to have to collect all the materials and energy that flow through that system boundary of that building. So all the materials used to build, all the materials used during construction, operations and maintenance, all of the energy as well, and this is where operational emissions come into play. And so it's a lot to gather. And then we're also tracking all of the emissions to air, land and water that may be occurring over that life cycle. So that's a more complicated system that we would be looking at. If you think about an LCA per precast on a cradle to gate basis, it looks more something like this. So in your A1, you would be collecting data on all of your raw material inputs and all of your energy inputs. So you want to look at cement and water and rebar, insulation, aggregate, I don't have all the boxes up there, but you know what goes into your product. Any miscellaneous pieces, if you're doing any special architectural, if you have finbrick, anything that crosses, about anything that comes into your plant, that goes into your product, you have to capture that. And we typically capture that on a 12-month basis, usually a calendar year basis. You're also doing that for all of your energy. So usually you're having to assemble energy bills to do that. You then need to figure out the transportation in A2, the transportation from all of your raw materials and energy sources to your plant. You have to figure out both the distance and the mode of transportation. And then anything that happens, you're capturing anything that happens within the plant itself. And then you also report out, so we can do a mass balance, you're reporting out the amount of product that goes out in those safe 12 months and the amount of waste. And usually within a small percentage error, the total weight of all your products plus the total weight of your waste equals roughly all the A1, all the raw materials that you're purchasing. So that's at a high level what we're doing. And so where do our impacts come from? How do you calculate the global warming potential? Well, for most products, the majority of their emissions, the greenhouse gas emissions, come from the energy that we use, both the energy that we use in the plant, the energy that we use, the fuels that we burn transporting all of our raw materials to our plants, and the energy sources themselves, you know, what the electricity we're getting from the grid, they're burning coal or other resources, or whatever that mix is in your local area, those energy sources usually are a big source of the greenhouse gas emissions that are attributed to the production of a product or the embodied carbon. Now, the special little blue plus we have up there is because in the case of concrete products, and in the case of some other products as well, there is additionally greenhouse gases that are emitted due to chemical reactions that occur either, you know, in the manufacturing facility itself or in the manufacturing of one of the upstream products are in our case that cement. And so those greenhouse gas emissions from the cement that we use, plus the greenhouse gas emissions from the energy we use are largely what form the embodied carbon of precast. But embodied carbon or global warming potential or climate change potential, it's only one environmental impact. So again, just to kind of take a take a step back for all of us. It is really important, although there is such this hyper fixity on global warming potential and embodied carbon right now, we do want to be mindful of other environmental impacts, other social impacts, other economic impacts, to ensure that we're not actually making it worse for future generations in some of these other areas, just because we're only focused on global warming potential. Okay, so we do the LCA, we set the scope and boundary, we collect the data, we categorize all that data into environmental impacts. And most EPDs are going to report out at least these five environmental impacts and probably even more in the precast PCR, we require and most building product, PCRs require that you report out at least these five environmental impacts, and other inventory items as well, such as how much, how much renewable energy do you use? How much waste you produce? How much water do you consume? These kinds of environmental impacts are all reported out in an EPD. They're all calculated in LCA. They're there for people if they are interested, but the interest seems to be primarily on the GWP right now. Okay, so and the thing about the EPDs is that the whole reason that they came into existence is because LCA, as I talked about, is, is the good tool and really the best tool that we have to do these environmental assessments. However, the report that you receive from doing this assessment, especially the more complicated the system, it can be really lengthy, and it can be really difficult for, for specifiers for owners for manufacturers to say, hey, you know, what's my best choice? Where are my environmental hotspots? Where can I do better? And so EPDs were developed as a simplified summary, as a label, to be able to report out technical information that's been third party verified. And it has to be based on a full LCA, or excuse me, an LCA that supports your goal and scope, and a product category rule. And in the construction industry for both buildings and civil engineering works, you're going to see ISO 21930 referenced a lot because it's another standard that is placed on top of the LCA that we do to ensure that there's more parity for construction products. And so just to kind of summarize in a real, you know, succinct way, you need to perform your LCA according to a PCR. And from those two pieces, you can create an EPD. And EPDs just as another point to let you know, EPDs were type three environmental labels, according to ISO 1425. Those are the environmental labels that are by and large being requested by specifiers. But just for your information, there are two other types. So they didn't just start with type three, they started with type one and type two. And then the type three is the one that that most people are going to be asking for. So the type one is a voluntary multi criteria eco label. These are usually developed and managed through either a governmental organization or a private non commercial entity. So these are kind of a label that you might see that maybe the carpet industry or the tile council or some entity has developed these multi criteria labels, they are not based on LCA. The type two labels, these are self declared claims. So these are I use, you know, 23% recycled content, you could create a label that says that these labels, the type two labels are not based on LCA either. And they are not typically third party verified. So of the three types of labels, the type three, that's the reason that most specifiers want those are based on LCA, and they're third party verified. Okay, so what are we seeing out in the market, and I probably don't have to tell you because most of you are probably living and breathing it. But there are embodied carbon requirements being put forward in a few different areas, I like to break them into codes and standards, policy work and stakeholder initiatives. So on the codes and standards side that there have been provisions kind of related to embody carbon in ASHRAE 189.1 and IGCC for a number of years now, those provisions are broken into what I call a disclosure or a full LCA based, I'll give you a better example of that. But as is no surprise, there are provisions being developed in all sorts of places, there are three different efforts, at least that I'm aware of and involved in through ACI. There's a draft appendix being developed through ACI 318 that includes sustainability provisions specifically related to embody carbon. There are some disclosure requirements being vetted through ACI 301, which is the specification document. And there's a new committee ACI 323 on low carbon concrete that was just developed and just launched last month, focused on a low carbon concrete code. All of those are it's a little too early to say exactly what those provisions are going to look like. But basically, it's just further evidence that these requirements are popping up more, not less. So when it comes to the couple different types of ways that we see these requirements, as I mentioned, there's a transparency requirement. And so these are the ones where there's no requirement for being good or worse, or there's no values per se. But you do have to provide an EPD. So you do have to provide either an industry wide or a product specific EPD. And we do already have industry wide EPDs that are available for precast that we'll show you again in a couple slides here. The other way that embody carbon sneaks its way into ASHRAE 189 is through the performance path. And in that path, you do have to perform a full lifecycle assessment on your structure. And you do have to show that there's a reduction in two environmental impact categories, one of them which has to be global warming potential. And so in both of these instances, both in the transparency and the performance requirements, the you can see that the requirements are they're based on technical rigor. They're based on consensus. So they're maybe they're an easier path to entry for most. But part of the problem with codes and standards development is that it can historically be very slow. So these standards and codes come out every three to four years, and then you have another few years typically for adoption. And so in the green building movement and decarbonization world, that on of it being too slow is the reason that we're seeing the other two levers for embodied carbon requirements. The first of those other two is what I call policy work. So if you live in Maryland, or New Jersey, or Denver, or California, or Washington State, or, you know, name a jurisdiction, Boston, you have probably seen something that is referred to as by clean by clean legislation, that they can show up at a statewide level and state legislation or can show up as local ordinances. And then we're starting to get into even at another level, we're starting to see some requirements at both the federal level, through the Executive Order and the Inflation Reduction Act, pushing federal agencies like GSA and Federal Highways to set requirements and specify and use low carbon materials in order to get the funding from the IRA. So we're seeing all sorts of activity in this area. And as an example, I have two examples of local policies that have been enacted recently. So the first of these, the Low Embodied Carbon Concrete Leadership Act, that was this was just signed into law at the end of January. It sets a requirement or an incentive mechanism. So this is a carrot versus a stick for producers to develop EPDs. And they give them a tax credit in order to offset the cost of developing these EPDs. And what they'll eventually do is create a baseline or a threshold for embodied carbon, maximum embodied carbon for concrete based on GWP values that they receive from these EPDs that they receive. In Colorado, if you're in Colorado, I know that the that there's been a lot of activity over there because the Colorado House passed a bill in 2021. And it has a tiered level of requirements for submission of plant specific EPDs. Precast was spared the first round of submission requirements. However, beginning July 1 of 2023, if you meet certain requirements in terms of the size of the project, you have to submit a plant specific EPD in order to bid their or be awarded their projects. And so what's going to happen is Colorado DOT is collecting these EPDs and then they will they are required by law to issue benchmark values by July 1 of 2025. And then after that point, then you will have to meet those benchmark values or be below those benchmark values in order to participate. So obviously, these policy requirements have come on fast and furious. I said sometimes faster, but I think it's been, it can make your head spin a little bit if you start paying attention to the number of bills and laws being proposed. They can if they work with the local jurisdiction. And I know Colorado is a model of this, they, they can work with local jurisdictions and local producers to set requirements and benchmarks that are feasible. But you have to be aware that these things are happening and you have to get a seat at the table in order to be considered. If they develop the requirements in any given jurisdiction in a vacuum, then they may not understand our product, they may not, they may set requirements based on ready mix instead of precast. There's a bit of a confusion out there. So you need to make sure that you're at the table. So some of the cons of these, as I mentioned, there's sometimes there's fewer technical voices. And that's what I meant by making sure you're at the table, make sure they understand what, how your product is manufactured, and let them know that it's not ready mix, you know, you also have the curing, you also have the insulation, sometimes you certainly have reinforcement in there. So it's not, it's, it cannot be an apples to apples comparison. Okay, and then the last category of these requirements, I call the stakeholder initiatives. So under that category, I have a couple of, you know, big picture ones, you know, so the owner requirements, I say tech, tech companies and others, but we know who they are, right? They're the Apple, the Google, the Meta, the Microsoft, the Amazon, the these are the companies that are saying, we're not going to wait for legislation, we're not going to wait for the code, we're going to set these requirements. And if you want to produce product for our projects, you have to meet them. So there are those types of requirements that are out there. And then there's this se 2050 challenge. So the se 2050 challenge was developed, the challenge was actually issued by the carbon leadership forum, which is a think tank out at University of Washington. And it was adopted by the Structural Engineering Institute of ASCE. So this is the same SEI that develops ASCE, SEI, ASCE 7. So heard of that same organization, structural engineers adopted this challenge. And what they've done is on a company wide level, they have vowed to track the global warming potential, body carbon of structural materials, you can find out more on their website, se 2050. There's there are some good resources there in terms of basic information. But what does it do? Okay, so basically, a firm, a structural engineering firm that signs up to the challenge, agrees to do three things. They agree to establish an embodied carbon action plan. That's a plan that they use internally to reduce the embodied carbon on their projects. They actively implement that plan. So they look for ways to specify low carbon, low impact materials, understand embodied carbon, use LCA when they can. And the third thing they agree to do if they're going to participate is share that information. So they're sharing that information through a centralized database that's collecting embodied carbon or GWP data for different projects. And the idea behind this database and collecting all of this data is that it would help structural firms understand like how to report embodied carbon, how to calculate or capture GWP. And it would also part of the ultimate hope is create an embodied carbon benchmark for different types of buildings and structural systems. So the thing with these stakeholder initiatives is that they're very aspirational, they're very fast moving, there are very few guardrails placed on what they can do and what they can ask for. The bad thing is there, there's really very little balance. So this is, in the case of the ACE 2050, there's very little input from there are some industry stakeholders, but it's mainly structural engineers. There's also a lack of enforcement. So it's, it's hard to say, you know, what's, what's going to come of that piece. Okay, so hopefully that didn't scare you too much, you knew about most of the stuff that was going on. So we're going to talk now about what PCI has right now in terms of what you can use to educate yourself, to promote precast, to speak intelligently about embodied carbon. We're gonna talk about resources, both that we have right now and ones that we're developing. So we have, as I mentioned already, we have industry average EPDs on the sustainability resources page, the members only page at pci.org. So these industry average EPDs are there. They may suit your purposes for some requirements. However, if the specifications or the owner is asking for a plant specific, then you cannot use these. These will not serve your purpose. But if you need to develop a plant specific, we also have the PCR for precast up on that resource page as well. Okay. One of the most valuable resources I think that we have that I wanna make sure you know about is this comparative LCA that we did on precast. This was way back, probably in 2009. We did this comparative assertion. So as I mentioned, everyone has to do an LCA first before they do an EPD. So one of the first forays we took into LCA and EPD was this comparative LCA. And so what we did, this was a big PCI research project over two years. We looked at three different structural systems, precast, cast in place and steel, five different envelope systems. So we had curtain wall, brick and steel stud, and you can see down the left there. So that gave us 15 combinations of structure and envelope to model. We looked at those systems in two phases. And as I mentioned, this was a big PCI research project. So basically what we did is we gathered all the data for the precast part, the cradle to gate information. And we did that first. And then in the second year of the project, we expanded and did the full cradle to grave. So it's a comparative assertion through ISO, which means we had to follow a lot of requirements because we knew that we would be reporting these results out to the public. Our scope, the scope, the thing that we analyzed was a typical five-story commercial office building. Excuse the metric. One thing you're going to find about EPDs and sustainability, we talk in metric a lot. So this is a typical five-story commercial office building with a higher first story height and then 3.7 meters. So about 10 feet for the other stories with a window to wall ratio of 0.4, condition space for 130 people. And a 73-year service life. I know that seems random, but there is a reference to back that up. So not only did we have 15 different combinations of structure and envelope, we analyzed that same office building in four different climate zones. And we looked at 10 different environmental indicators. So the first few that, well, they're kind of interspersed, the environmental impacts and the environmental indicators, which would be things like total primary energy, respiratory effects, solid waste. So we looked at these 10 different indicators, four climate zones, 15 combinations of structure. So we had 60 different combinations of the model that we looked at. And we got some really great information out of it. So first of all, on the cradle to gate part, when we were looking at, okay, what are the influences on precast? And this is still true for you guys now. So we identified the environmental hotspots in precast concrete production. And what we found was, no surprise, the number one environmental hotspot, the one that increased the environmental impact the most was the amount of Portland cement usage. So you could see a trend align with the amount of Portland cement usage versus environmental impact. No surprise, right? The second one was a bit of a surprise though. Transportation distances. So what's the heaviest thing we use? It's the aggregate, right? And we use a lot of it. So most of our mixes are, the weight of them is due to the aggregate. And that aggregate, because it's heavy, if it's transported long distances, especially by an inefficient mode of transportation, like a tractor trailer or truck, that can significantly influence your environmental impact as well. Now, we're still not getting that close to Portland cement, but it was significant enough to be called an environmental impact or an environmental hotspot. We also found important factors were related to water usage and the differences from plant to plant. And some of the larger manufacturers that had several plant locations actually found that they could pinpoint where water was used more efficiently or not based on the results. And then the other thing is talking about other environmental impact categories, the ozone depletion potential. So that's one of the other environmental impact categories. It was largely influenced by the amount of insulation we use. So that's a tricky one to discuss. And we could spend a little bit more time on that in the future maybe, but obviously the more insulation we use, the less the energy used in the use phase. But perhaps if there are insulation types that contribute less to that ozone depletion potential and have the same R value or performance, they might be worth looking into. So that's some really interesting information that we found from the cradle to gate part. And the cradle to grave, what we found was that no matter the climate zone, no matter the combination of structure and envelope, the use stage, the operational energy had the greatest contribution to environmental impact. And what I have here is I'm showing the results, the cradle to gate on the left and the cradle to grave on the right of that building in one climate zone, which is the Denver area. And we're just looking at global warming potential here. So on the left, basically that's the embodied carbon of the structure. It's just the cradle to gate of all these different structures in Denver. And it looks like there's a big swing, but it's really, you know, it goes from roughly 1,000 to up to 1,600, roughly, if you look at the scale. Now, look at the scale on the right. All of these different structures, their combination, their total GWP for the full life ranges from 59 to 62 million million, million. So we found some interesting things from that. Use stage is still huge, huge when it comes to energy efficiency. And of course, as our buildings become more energy efficient, then that's going to influence, you know, the greater percentage of that upfront. So that's something. But the other interesting thing, at least from my perspective was that, you know, the coefficient of variation among the different structure enclosure combinations for a given climate zone was 2% or less. That meant it was basically noise in the differences. So what does that say? That says that you can choose any combination of these that you want that meets your schedule, that meets your costs, that meets your performance requirements. Because the environmental impact is going to be roughly the same. Okay. So other current PCI resources, there is the sustainability designers notebook. If you are starting from square one, when it comes to sustainability, read that thing. It has more information than you ever wanted to know. There's this very famous author who's written three articles recently, two for Ascent and one for Aspire on sustainability. I wish I had my camera on so you can see I was smirking. That was a little tongue in cheek there, but I have written a few articles recently on different topics related to EPDs. So those are current resources that might be useful for you to hand out to clients or just even educate yourself. And we do have a number of webinars on the e-learning center. Some of you have probably been with me with previous webinars that I've given either through PCI or through the regions, but we have a few out there and all of the Precast Protects Life series of webinars are really useful in that way. Okay. So let's look to the future and what do we got cooking on the back end? So the big thing is, the big, big thing is that we are going to be updating EPDs soon. We're going to be starting data collection. There was just a contract signed with WAP to use an online tool that's going to streamline data collection for all of you and streamline EPD generation. So we're going to have upcoming webinars both on how to collect the data and how specifically to use that tool. You're going to be able to use it for plant or product specific EPDs. So you're going to collect data for a calendar year 2023. You're going to input all of that data into the tool. From that, once that tool, the tool is already verified. Once your location has been verified that yes, you've uploaded the data correctly, you can then develop EPDs for your plant. You can develop plant specific EPDs, product specific EPDs. You can do them specifically for projects. You'll have a lot of flexibility. So it's a really great tool that PCI is bringing to you. Just to kind of jump back just a little bit to kind of remove any concern that people might have to participate in this tool, you really don't need to, you don't need to provide anything you don't know. All of the environmental impact calculations are going to be done in the tool itself. You only have to collect the data that you know already. So you're going to be collecting material quantities. So how much cement did you buy this year? How much aggregate, you know, how much admixtures you're going to calculate all of that. Distance traveled and mode of transportation between your suppliers. Any fuels you use in the plant itself. This is only within the plant boundaries. If you also own a fleet, you will be separating out the amount of fuel that you're using to ship products versus what's used in, you know, to move product around the yard or whatever. And then the amount of product and waste. That's it. Really good summer intern project. If you're looking for ideas. We also have some more webinars planned in terms of more specificity on EPDs and how to use them. The sustainability committee has just been reformed and we'll be meeting soon to either most likely provide some guidance on EPD requirements and other guidance and tools. So if you're interested in participating at that, they'll likely be meeting in person at the committee days this fall. And then we also have another set of publications and webinars planned for external stakeholders. So we have a designer's notebook talking about the nuances of environmental product declarations, how you can use them for material selection, how you shouldn't, when you should compare versus when you shouldn't. From that designer's notebook, when it's out, we'll be developing articles summarizing, summarizing the, you know, executive summary of the designer's notebook. And then we do have a article coming in the construction specifier on EPDs as well. And finally, another webinar on the role of precast EPDs. So we have a lot, we have done a lot and we are planning to do a lot. And we hope that if any of you are interested, you'll join us in developing these resources. So with that, I don't know, I know Jared's been monitoring some of the chat and the questions in the background. I don't know if there are any questions for me or for- The only question that, the first question to get started is, there's been some requests lately for HPD. And the question was, how do these differ from an EPD? Yeah, so an HPD is a health product declaration. I have not gone into that space too much. I know that there are a couple of standards that are available, you know, that you have to follow in order to get those HPDs. But it's kind of a different animal. It's more related to exposure, like toxicology and chemicals. Think California Prop 65. It's more in that, it's more in the human health area. So I'm not as familiar with that, I'm sorry to say. Yeah, and I agree. I would just echo that. And I think it's a self-declared list of products or components of your product that you're identifying materials you may have used that may be perceived as harmful to health. Great. One question that also came in, there's been, you talked about it a little bit, the requirements coming in through the GSA for embodied carbon in concrete. And how do these requirements apply to precast products? Oh, good question. Yeah, I didn't highlight that. So that's an area where you need to be, that's an area where the PCR comes in. So this happens a lot. There's a lot, I don't have to tell a precaster, there's a lot of confusion in the marketplace or just the general public on the difference between precast and concrete. They think all concrete is concrete, right? The big decider, the big difference is that PCR. So in the GSA requirements right now, they are referencing the ReadyMix PCR, which by default, precasters cannot meet. We cannot meet the precast or we cannot meet the ReadyMix PCR because we have a precast PCR. So those requirements do not apply to precasters. That doesn't mean that you're not going to have to explain that to someone or that I haven't explained that to several people. I also have submitted public comments on some of these to talk about the difference, but that is a very common misconception where they will say concrete and they will list the ReadyMix PCR and then they may mention precast, but precast can't meet the ReadyMix PCR. So yeah, we'll likely be developing some resources on that, I guess, through the sustainability committee. And one other way that I guess I've related it to is the ReadyMix EPD is based off of a volume, a cubic yard of concrete. And our EPD is based off of a unit ton of precast. So the baseline unit is not equivalent. So that's the other way when you're trying to explain why you can't compare these two products is just that the way it's measured and the volume or the unit that it's based off of are not equivalent. Exactly. I guess we'll give it one more minute to see if any other questions come into the chat box there, just to summarize while everyone's still here, we're getting ready to launch the EPD data collection process. We'll be coming out here over the next couple of weeks to months with some webinars from the provider WAP that is going to be helping us with that. So anybody who was around the last time, you might remember Athena Institute. A number of those individuals have joined this WAP consulting group, and that's the group that has put together this tool that we'll be using to develop the EPDs that we'll be going forward with next year. So getting ready to start that process. So here, Emily, one more came in. We've been submitting plan information for several years since COVID had fell behind on submitting the new data gathering going to take place at that. And I think yes to Ashley's question, we will be this new process. So previously everything was through a Excel-based format, and this will be transitioning to an online format where your data is submitted directly to a online tool platform that then collects and collates all of it for us to avoid that translation process of using an Excel spreadsheet. Right. I guess no more questions. Thank you, Emily, for this wonderful summary today. If you have any questions, feel free to email any of us here at PCI, and we'll route them over to Emily to elaborate on anything that you might be looking for more information on. Thank you.

EPDs

LCAs

PCRs

sustainability

concrete production

operational energy

data collection

sustainability committee

embodied carbon