EU Environmental Footprinting - Policy context, rationale and recent decisions

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Building the Single Market for Green Products

Dr. Michele Galatola Product team leader DG Environment – Sustainable Production and Consumption Unit

Policy mandates Single Market Act Proposal No 10: Before 2012, the Commission will look into the feasibility of an initiative on the Ecological Footprint of Products to address the issue of the environmental impact of products, including carbon emissions. The initiative will explore possibilities for establishing a common European methodology to assess and label them.

Council Conclusions 20 December 2010 The Council invites the Commission to “develop a common methodology on the quantitative assessment of environmental impacts of products, throughout their life-­cycle, in order to support the assessment and labelling of products”

Resource EfDiciency Roadmap – 20 September 2011  Establish a common methodological approach to enable Member States and the private sector to assess, display and benchmark the environmental performance of products, services and companies based on a comprehensive assessment of environmental impacts over the life-­‐ cycle ('environmental footprint') (in 2012)  Ensure better understanding of consumer behaviour and provide better information on the environmental footprints of products, including preventing the use of misleading claims, and reOining eco-­labelling schemes (in 2012)

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• More than 400 environmental labels in the world • Only for GHGs, 80 leading reporting methods and initiatives • Issues:

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Confusion, mistrust Free-riders win Costs

• What is green?

• How do I prove that my product or company is green?

• If I choose one approach, will it be accepted by everyone?

• Do I have to prove I'm green in different ways to different clients?

• Will consumers and business partners understand my claim?

• Does green mean more expensive?

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A world of de facto requirements for green products

is Swed

h EPD

PAS 2050

BP X30-323 Swiss foot print IT carb on foo tprint EPD sche mes JP, S Kor

ea, T aiwa n

Some figures…

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Lack of consistency: a principle barrier for displaying environmental performance (72.5% stakeholders in agreement)

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Market potential is high: 80% of EU consumers buy green products at least sometimes – 26% buy them regularly

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89% of EU citizens believes that buying green products makes a difference for the environment

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Only half of consumers find it easy to differentiate green products from other products

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Only half of EU citizens trust producers' claims about the environmental performance of their products

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Most important considerations when buying: quality (97%), price (87%), environment (84%)

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69% of citizens support obliging companies to publish reports on their environmental performance

These figures are taken from the draft 2013 Eurobarometer on "Attitudes of Europeans towards Building the Single Market for Green Products"

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Without SMGP… • Appetite for environmental performance information grows • but there's little push for coordinating approaches E.g. a recent report found that 94 companies used 585 different indicators in environmental reports. Of the indicators disclosed, 22% were used by more than 3 corporations; 55% were used only once; 16% were used twice; and 7% were used three times. This would remain standard practice.

• new initiatives and methods emerge to satisfy demand for information – proliferation increases

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Without SMGP… •

Missed opportunities for environmental performance improvement for products and for organisations •

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E.g. PUMA has stated that 94% of the environmental impacts of its products occur along the supply chain – not taking a life cycle approach makes us blind to these issues

Missed opportunities for competitiveness

• Missing an additional push for environmental technologies and solutions In a recent survey more than 1/3 of 250 business executives said that they could not keep up with consumer demand for sustainable products and services and 62% declared that sustainable investments were motivated by consumer expectations for green products • Savings opportunities not exploited at a large scale E.g. companies like Xerox who saved 400 million dollars by implementing LCA-based design for environment would remain the best practice, not the norm

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Consultations • 5 years continuous consultations (EU and internationally) during the ILCD development process; • 1st wave of pilots (10 products + 10 organisations) • Physical workshop with about 150 stakeholders form worldwide + webstreaming recording available on the website • Public consultation running from 11 January 2012 until 3 April 2012 (426 respondents) • A long list of bilateral meetings with single companies, trade associations, chambers of commerce, EU and non-EU governments, NGOs • The two draft methods have been published on DG ENV public web-site since July 2011

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Objective To improve the availability of clear, reliable and comparable information on the environmental performance of products and organisations

How 3-year 3-year pilot phase Pilot phase

PEF

Commission Recommendation

Communication: Building the Single Market for Green Products

OEF

International dialogue

UCPD Guidance

Communication principles

Policy links

Industrial policy Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP)

SMGP

Single Market Act

Non-financial reporting

Research

GPP Â Ecodesign Â

Communication Principles  Transparency  Availability and accessibility  Reliability  Completeness  Comparability  Clarity UCPD  Improve guidance – uniform enforcement  Recommendations for future action – Multi-stakeholder Dialogue on Environmental Claims Report – references PEF and OEF

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Communication

1. Deepen the knowledge base 2. 9 practical advices (Claim substantiation, Reliability, Relevance and usefulness, Transparency, Clarity, Proportionality, Accessibility, Completeness, Comparability) 3. Provide further guidance on general claims 4. Further development and review of UPCD guidance 5. Coherent and coordinated enforcement 6. Self- and co-regulatory approaches 7. Support ambitious and credible environmental labels 8. Assess regulatory framework for new approaches medium or longer term 9. Continue MDEC with new mandate

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International

 Main issue: initiatives developing in isolation -

Actions  Cooperation with trading partners more co-ordinated approach  Common quality requirements for LCI data and database  Capacity building in developing countries (UNEP)

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Recommendation on the use of the EF methods to measure and communicate the life cycle environmental performance of products and organisations •

Use/ promote: in voluntary MS policies, by private companies and organisations, schemes (e.g. private reporting or labelling schemes), by the financial community (e.g. investment decisions)

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Contribute: availability of high-quality life cycle data

SME features •

MS: invitation to provide assistance and tools and report back

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Private sector: support to SMEs in supply chains, simplified calculation tools

Annexes: •

Annex 1 - Potential fields of application of PEF and OEF methods and results

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Annex 2 - Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) Guide

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Annex 3 – Organisation Environmental Footprint (OEF) Guide

The methods

The Environmental Footprint: •

Builds on existing methods

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Is applicable without having to consult a series of other documents (“one-stop shop”)

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Provides comprehensive evaluation along the entire life cycle (from raw materials to end of life / waste management)

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Provides comprehensive coverage of potential environmental impacts (no ‘single issue’ method)

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Enables comparability of results, e.g. of different products (but only if PEFCRs/OEFSRs are available)

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How was the PEF Guide Developed?

Environmental assessment documents analysed: Ecological footprint BP X 30-­‐323

PAS 2050 ISO 14067

ISO 14044

ILCD Product Standards, Greenhouse Gas Protocol (WRI/ WBCSD)

Where does the EF fit?

Environmental footprint

ISO14044

……..

Carbon footprint ISO14001, EMAS

Water footprint Chemical footprint

ISO14025

Overview of the EF methodology

What are the differences between PEF and traditional LCA? Not that many!!

PEF is a way of doing an LCA which enables to deliver more consistent, reliable and reproducible results. Moreover, compared to a traditional ISO 14040 compliant LCA, PEF includes features that make easier the communication of its results both in B2B and B2C. These new characteristics of PEF are possible due to: • a limitation of methodological flexibility, • more stringent requirements related to data quality, and • the introduction of normalization and weighting

Examples of “clear” requirements  Offsets  Impact categories and impact assessment methods  Electricity use  Biogenic carbon emissions and removals  Direct and indirect land use change  Renewable energy generation  Temporary storage and delayed emissions  A single formula for EoL  Nomenclature  Data quality requirements  Allocation rules  Reporting  Reviews and reviewers’ qualifications

Simplification features

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Consumers’ comparison Modulated incentives/ investments Greening the value chain: full potential of Resource Efficiency

B2B B2C Reporting

High quality life cycle data

PEFCR/ OEFSR (Pilots)

Environmental Footprint methods (2013)

PEFCR = Product Footprint Category Rules OEFSR = Organisation Footprint Sector Rules B2B = Business to Business B2C = Business to Consumers D4E = Design for Environment

Quantified performances but NO benchmark Hotspot analysis, D4E Some Resource Efficiency benefits

Examples of possible uses of the PEF method

(This is a non exhaustive list) 

optimisation of processes along the life cycle of a product;

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support product design minimising environmental impacts along the life cycle;

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communication of life cycle environmental performance information on products (e.g. through labelling, documentation accompanying the product, websites and apps) but without comparisons or comparative assertions;

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schemes related to environmental claims, in particular ensuring sufficient robustness and completeness of claims;

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reputational schemes giving visibility to products that calculate their life cycle environmental performance;

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voluntary schemes involving the measurement and communication of life cycle environmental performance information to consumers;

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identification of significant environmental impacts in view of setting criteria for ecolabels.

LCA 1 cup of coffee

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EXAMPLE - RESULTS Most important life cycle phase for a cup of coffee: USE Most important impact categories (relevant phases along the life cycle): • Climate change (energy use in production and use phase) • Water use (raw material and use) • Resource depletion (mineral, fossil)

COMMUNICATING RESULTS WITH PEFCR (fictitious example; possible if PEFCR available)

NO PEFCR (2012)

Environmental impacts Water

E

vs.

Resources Climate Verified by …

Performance level B

vs.

Performance level C

Performance level A

Timeline

• Deadline of applications: 21 June, 12:00 CET • Selection of product groups and sectors: July 2013 • Start of the pilots (September/October 2013) • End of the pilots (September 2016)

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2nd phase

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Future policies Policy discussion Peer review of the pilot phase and of alternative methods tested under similar conditions Internal evaluation of the pilots starting with September 2016

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For any further information http://ec.europa.eu/environment/eussd/smgp/ env-­environmental-­footprint@ec.europa.eu

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