WHY INDICATE
INDICATE aimed to meet one of the most fundamental challenges to decarbonise buildings – the lack of data to support policymaking and strategic business decision-making.
INDICATE pushed for policy and industry to tackle both operational and embodied carbon -‘Whole Life Carbon’ (WLC).
WHAT WAS INDICATE
INDICATE was an accelerator which offered a project framework and co-funding to support efforts to generate much-needed building-level WLC data in Europe. The data had to be generated if industry and policy action on decarbonising buildings were to be brought in line with the 1.5 °C target from the 2015 Paris COP21 agreement.
National partnerships were forged between industry, academia, and national government. This co-creation approach promised to ensure the stakeholders would act on the data and the outcomes to accelerate policy and industry change.
The generated data aimed to support:
The demand for product level LCA
The push towards setting WLC benchmarks
Setting national regulations
Preparations for EU EPBD negotiations.
INDICATE offered a combination of financial support and technical advice on both ‘Life Cycle Analysis’ (LCA) data and policy advocacy.
The financial support was targeted at generating the data foundation, whilst INDICATE’s cocreation approach and advocacy support were designed to ensure the all-important buy-in of industry and policy makers to take and use the data to accelerate progress towards a fully decarbonised building stock.
Financial support up to €250.000 and technical advice
With grants up to €250.000, INDICATE supported the collection of systemised and improved data of new or existing building LCA results. It directly enabled generation of insights into the state of the respective national building stock and carbon reduction potential of different national strategies. To ensure buy-in from supported consortiums there was a requirement of public co-funding.
PILOT COUNTRIES
INDICATE supported 3 selected EU countries to increase the quality, quantity, and application of building-level LCA data, to manage and minimize the WLC footprint of buildings.
-
The situation before INDICATE:
Although before starting INDICATE, there were several initiatives such as the IETcc CSIC OpenDAP, ITEC BEDEC, Cype Environmental databases, and others, in Spain there was no national harmonised LCA method or national database of construction products with associated environmental data. The data infrastructure, which comprised different software and data sources (e.g., IteC, OneClickLCA, Cype, etc), was a main barrier to pushing for WLC policy action. As comparability, data accessibility and transparency were limited in the existing building LCA data industry, policymakers did not have the foundation to take action.
How INDICATE helped:
The national INDICATE project helped to increase engagement, raise awareness, and support the creation of a national LCA data infrastructure for buildings, including baselines and benchmarks to accelerate the WLC assessment implementation in practice. As part of the project national datasets, accessible and functional to different stakeholders and regions in Spain, were developed. 50 archetypes of building LCAs were conducted. They were based on 10 real cases (5 building types; for each north/south construction type) and modelled into two alternative structural configurations and five different envelope types.
The consortium partners:
University of Seville, The Green Building Council España and the Government of Spain (as observers).
For more information on the Spanish INDICATE project, please contact Antonio García Martínez (University of Seville) by e-mail: agarcia6@us.es -
The situation before INDICATE:
In Ireland, there had been a rapid increase in the private sector in quantifying Whole Life Carbon (WLC) over the past two years before INDICATE. However, without a national methodology or centralised national database, WLC measurements were not comparable. Some were using different methodologies, different time frames, measuring a different scope, and were not aligned with the European wide Level(s) framework. Furthermore, it was not known whether the generic data used was actually representative of Ireland.
How INDICATE helped:
The national INDICATE project aimed to enable an acceleration in integration of Whole Life Carbon (WLC) into regulation, public procurement, and industry. It supported the creation of a final LCA-assessment methodology approach, data infrastructure and agreed methodology. As part of the project, 50 validated LCAs were conducted, and an open-access online platform was developed, which ensured the data was easy to interrogate, analyse and use by industry, policy makers and researchers.
The consortium partners:
The project will be delivered through Construct Innovate, Ireland's national research centre for construction technology and innovation with core personnel from University of Galway, Irish Green Building Council and University College Dublin in the project delivery team, supported by Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland.
For more information on the Irish INDICATE project, please contact Stephen Barrett (Irish Green Building Council) by e-mail: stephen@igbc.ie
-
The situation before INDICATE:
The lack of knowledge on consumers, low amount of LCA data available, low market push, low capacity and partial reluctance of governmental entities characterised the situation regarding WLC/LCA of buildings in the country before INDICATE. The Czech Republic did not have a decarbonisation strategy in place for the building sector and construction regulation responsibilities were shared among multiple ministries, whose coordination could have been improved. There was a lack of awareness about WLC among policy makers accompanied by low support from the government.
How INDICATE helped:
The national INDICATE project supported the analysis of the existing national building LCA case studies while also contributing to the creation of 50 new WLC building case studies. Based on these case studies, the project helped to begin defining benchmarks for WLC of buildings for the Czech Republic building stock. As part of the project, case studies and results were presented at live events with interested parties and during bilateral meetings with policy makers and project results were communicated via a communication campaign on social media.
The consortium partners:
University Centre for Energy Efficient Buildings of Czech Technical University in Prague, The Czech Green Building Council, Chance for Buildings with the support of the Ministry of Environment and the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Czech Republic.
For more information on the Czech INDICATE project, please contact Licia Felicioni (Czech Technical University in Prague) by e-mail: licia.felicioni@cvut.cz
WHO WAS BEHIND INDICATE
The accelerator was a collaboration of Smith Innovation as operator, and BPIE, KU Leuven and WorldGBC, who delivered political and technical support, and Laudes Foundation as funding partner.
-
Assist philanthropic foundations, local governments as well as companies and organizations in the building industry to take a leading role in the transition towards a sustainable future. Therefore, Smith is an interdisciplinary team rooted in a mix of disciplines, including economics, engineering, natural and social science. We believe that a structured, yet open-ended approach to systemic challenges is the key to success regardless of whether we facilitate firms to develop new services or provide recommendations for governmental institutions and philanthropic foundations.
-
The World Green Building Council (WorldGBC) is the largest and most influential localregional- global action network, leading the transformation to sustainable and decarbonised built environments for everyone, everywhere.
Together, with 75+ Green Building Councils and industry partners from all around the world, we are driving systemic changes to:
Address whole life carbon emissions of existing and new buildings
Enable resilient, healthy, equitable and inclusive places
Secure regenerative, resource efficient and waste-free infrastructure
-
The research group Architectural Engineering at KU Leuven tackle innovation in the design of buildings by approaching architecture from an engineering point of view. The group conducts cutting-edge research on technical aspects of architecture, considering structure, materials, services, and comfort requirements in a multidisciplinary setting in order to quantify, assess, and improve the quality, cost, and sustainability of the built environment.
-
BPIE (Buildings Performance Institute Europe) is a leading independent centre of expertise on energy performance of buildings, providing data-driven and actionable policy analysis, advice, and implementation support to decision-makers in the public, private, and non-profit sectors. Founded in 2010, BPIE combines expertise on energy efficiency, renewable energy technologies, and health and indoor environment with a deep understanding of EU policies and processes. A not-for-profit think-tank based in Brussels and Berlin, our mission is to make an affordable, climate-neutral built environment a reality in Europe and globally.
-
Laudes Foundation is a philanthropic foundation founded in 2020 and working in the intersection of research, policy, and pre-commercial industry practice. Laudes is responding to the dual crises of inequality and climate change by supporting systemic change within the built environment, fashion industry and new economic thinking.
All three EU member states who participated in INDICATE have successfully reached the goal of compiling 50 real-world building case studies and consistent patterns and findings have been identified. However, the values differ due to variations in building practices, grid carbon intensity, assessment methods and data sources. Through expanding the sample sizes, improving data collection standards, refining associated templates and creating open and transparent infrastructure for data and analytics, more robust benchmarking efforts will be developed, ensuring more reliable and actionable insights. This aims to ensure a harmonised EU WLC approach through consistent methodologies, improving the comparability of WLC reporting and benchmarks.
Obtaining the quantity and quality of accurate data to establish reliable benchmarks and target values remains a significant challenge due to no statutory requirements. The baselines developed in INDICATE are an initial reference point, which require additional case studies covering a representative sample of the national building stock. These LCA’s must use consistent background data and assumptions to ensure comparability.
Emissions released during the production stage are the largest source of embodied carbon across the three member states and different building types (accounting for approximately 80% of total embodied carbon, meaning it is the most significant source of emissions for new constructions). Therefore, industry and policymakers should prioritise reducing these upfront emissions, in order to see the greatest decrease in emissions.
Results from the INDICATE project
Access the full report by BPIE here
-
Collaborate in technical working groups
Engage with building certification bodies
Engage with and remunerate data providers to access data sources
Address capacity problems
Collaborate with LCA software providers to ensure transparent and accessible databases
Expand Environmental Product Declarations (EPD) databases to include all construction products to increase data quality and availability.
Raise awareness of the benefits in addressing WLC to the construction and real estate sector to reduce misconceptions
Find out more
Please reach out to us if you want to learn more about how to support the initiative or are interested in the outcomes
By pressing “Contact Us” you will get the option to send a message to Smith Innovation via your email client.