Environmental Footprint Data

In April 2013, following the Sustainable Consumption and Production Action Plan (2008), the European Commission published a Communication on “Building the Single Market for Green Products - Facilitating better information on the environmental performance of products and organizations.” The aim was to harmonize existing measures to reduce costs for industries, reduce confusion among consumers about environmental information and increase comparability among products. Specifically, the Commission released the Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) Guide and the Organizational Environmental Footprint (OEF) Guide, under the premise of the “Single Market for Green Products Initiative.” Since then, the PEF and OEF project, coordinated by the European Commission, aims to develop common methods to measure and communicate the life cycle environmental performance of products and organisations.

The project, running from 2013, has seen two phases to date, the pilot phase (2013-2018) and the transition phase (2019-2024).

During the pilot phase of the project (2013-2018), the PEF/OEF methods were tested by 27 different industry sectors and about 20 Product Environmental Footprint Category Rules (PEFCRs) and Organisation Environmental Footprint Sectoral Rules (OEFSRs) were developed. To apply these sets of rules for the calculation of the PEF/OEF profile of a product/organisation, the processes used require both primary (company-specific) and secondary (background) data. Whilst the primary data are to be produced by the organisation applying the PEFCR/OEFSR (or one of their suppliers as specified in the PEFCR/OEFSR), the secondary datasets are to be available to the final user through free dedicated nodes.

More information on the final PEFCRs of the pilot phase, here.

Currently, the Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) and Organisation Environmental Footprint (OEF) project is in its transition phase (2019-2024). During this phase, before policies regarding environmental footprinting are adopted, the implementation of sets of rules established (PEFCRs) is monitored, the rules are expanded, and the background data developed are updated and expanded.

The Technical Advisory Board (TAB) provides technical advice and expertise to the Commission. The issues to be discussed might include, but are not limited to, analysis of the content of newly developed PEFCRs/OEFSRs, consistency of approaches among different PEFCRs/OEFSRs, and new methodological developments seen necessary within the EF context. The Technical Advisory Board, consists of LCA/EF experts.

More information about the group, its members and meetings here.

The transition phase of the PEF project will use the JRC reports on the PEF method and on the OEF method as their methodological basis. These methods include updates from developments and the lessons learned during the pilot phase (2013-2018).

Two working groups are looking into further methodological updates:

• Agricultural modeling working group (AWG).

• Data Working Group (DWG)

The goal of the EF Data Working Group (DWG) is to enhance the coordination and the communication with data developers and LCA software providers on (i) the developments on the Environmental Footprint (EF) reference package, and (ii) on data generation in the EF framework. The scope of the working group is to create a collaborative framework for future developments around EF needs only. Based on the outcomes of the deliverables of the DWG, the European Commission will consider to adapt and improve the guide for EF compliant datasets, the EF related software (released by the European Commission) and EF reference package.

Within its mission to promote and support the availability of high-quality data for environmental assessments that inform important decisions towards a more sustainable future, the ecoinvent association proudly participates to the PEF project.