1 Background, aim and scope

The European Ecolabel is a voluntary market tool that promotes the environmental excellence of products and services at European level/scale by means of the 1980/2000 Regulation of the European Parliament (European Commission 2000). The EU Ecolabel is administered by the European Ecolabelling Board (EUEB) and receives the support of the European Commission, all Member States of the European Union and the European Economic Area. The Ecolabelling Board includes representatives such as industry, environment protection groups and consumer organisations. There are currently 23 different product groups (PGs), and already more than 250 licences have been awarded for several hundred products (www.eco-label.com).

Table 1 Details for the selected example
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According to ISO 14020 classification (ISO 14020:2000), the European Ecolabel belongs to the “Type I environmental labelling” (ISO 14024 1999), and it promotes the excellence of products through exclusion hurdle respect specifically developed for each PG.

Even if carbon footprinting (CF) may appear fashionable, not all that glitters is gold (Finkbeiner 2009). At the same time, it is important to recognise that a spread interest and market demand for such a calculation tool is real and that there is a growing number of international, national and sectorial initiatives underway to deal with CF.

In this scenario, the “EU Ecolabel—the Carbon Footprint Measurement Toolkit” (Service Contract N. 070307/220/486031/SER/G2) aimed at providing the Commission with a (software) toolkit suitable for the carbon footprint measurement (calculation) taking into account the consideration of the EU Ecolabel (‘the Flower’) regarding the possible inclusion of the carbon issue in the criteria development processes (European Commission 2008).

The project was developed by the European Commission (EC), DG ENV—“Ecolabel Unit” with the technical support of Life Cycle Engineering (LCE, the contractor) and the Swedish Environmental Management Council (SEMCo, the sub-contractor). A brief description of the activities undertaken throughout the project and of the main results is now available; additional information and the official final deliverables can be found in the following sites:

  1. 1.

    The project mini-site: http://www.msr.se/en/About-us/Projects/Project-carbon-footprint/

  2. 2.

    The official EU Ecolabel website: http://ec.europa.eu/environment/ecolabel/carbon_en.htm

2 Materials and methods

The carbon footprint is the overall amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (such as methane) associated with a productFootnote 1 along its supply chain, which includes its use phase as well as product end-of-life management. The CF is measured by converting all the GHG emissions to an aggregated value of ‘CO2-equivalent’ (that represents the global warming potential—GWP)Footnote 2, thereby providing a value for the share that the product in question contributes to climate change.

The work was performed by means of four main tasks:

  1. 1.

    Literature review

  2. 2.

    Toolkit development

  3. 3.

    Expert and stakeholder consultation

  4. 4.

    Diffusion and dissemination

2.1 Task 1, literature review

Carbon footprint measurement methodologies can be classified into three different main groups:

  • General guidelines, such as ISO standards, that represent the normative standard references for CO2 calculation. Other standards may also be considered (for example, ISO 14040 for life cycle assessment (LCA) reference)

  • Specific guidelines, such as PASFootnote 3 2050, that contain ad hoc indication on GHG calculation and monitoring; the UNEP/SETAC Life-Cycle-Initiative with a project on CF can be included in this group as well

  • Calculation tools that are aimed at calculating CO2 emissions of specific activities (such as transportation or consumer behaviour)

Another specific group includes the CO2 offset providers which calculate GHG emissions to air by employing the LCA approach and thereby turning the amount of CO2 equivalents into a global carbon trade.

However, a customised calculation tool readily suitable for Ecolabel purposes is lacking. Certain tools may prove useful for toolkit implementation in various sections. A few examples are:

  • PAS 2050 for the general rules (BSI 2008; Sinden 2009; Minx et al. 2007)

  • GHG Protocol and Emission Trading Scheme for conversion factors (WRI 2004)

A specific life cycle CO2 calculation toolkit has therefore been developed with an associated technical background manual.

2.2 Task 2, measurement toolkit development

2.3 The CF of a product to be ecolabelled can be described as the sum of two main types of GHG emissions

  • Direct/primary footprint: mainly due to the combustion of fuels in the applicant plant and during the electricity generationFootnote 4

  • Indirect/secondary footprint: GHG generated from all the other sources

The measurement toolkit development followed the LCA approach, given that direct/indirect emissions to air measurement is a typical matter of the LCA methodology. The toolkit incorporated all standard procedures in compliance with existing international references and guidelines.

The Excel-based project output should be considered as a ‘starting basic version’ which can easily be modified/improved by the process of product group (PG) criteria development/revision.

The toolkit includes an exemplificative database, thereby providing the possibility for further development and integration by taking into account any new information available: i.e. new Life Cycle Data System (ILCD) Data Network (http://lca.jrc.ec.europa.eu), availability of a recent LCA study on a new PG, a more reliable data, etc. In other words, when a PG’ criteria development/revision process is going on, the Ad Hoc Working Group (AHWG), that is created to guide a transparent and wide discussion with reference stakeholders, is in charge to verify/update/implement and, finally, validate any single figure of the database in order to calculate the most reliable carbon footprint as additional criteria for the PG under study.

The calculation tool delivered by this project operates with a selected number of Excel sheets with the goal of supporting the execution of five examples, based on:

  • Readily and publicly available LCA data

  • Production system technical knowledge

  • The awareness that it is neither reasonable nor feasible to apply the toolkit to all production processes and product groups

Taking a look at the CF calculation, as said above, the combined environmental effect of any system can be expressed by a parameter known as GWP or carbon dioxide equivalent. As usual, the project has adopted the parameter dealing with a 100-year time span, the GWP100 for the carbon footprint calculation.

For an example, see Table 1 Footnote 5 which includes the following case:

  • Product group: “hard floor coverings” (HFC), for internal/external use, without any relevant structural function that includes agglomerated stones, ceramic tiles, clay tiles, concrete paving units, natural stones and terrazzo tiles. At present (2008−2009), this PG is under the revision process (Fig. 1).

    Fig. 1
    figure 1

    Example of how results of the carbon footprint calculation tool are reported by the software. The case refers to the fired hard processed floor coverings, belonging to the Hard Floor Coverings Product Group

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  • The sub-group that is considered for this example is: “processed fired products”, including clay tiles (defined by CEN 178) and ceramic tiles (defined by CEN/TC 67).

2.4 Task 3, experts and stakeholder consultation

Different consultation activities have been carried out during the project—the arrangement of a European-wide workshop and various diffusion and dissemination activities such as participation in key events to present both the project and the preliminary results; consultations with selected stakeholders to get their views and inputs on the project work; set-up of an ad hoc website with on-line consultation services and issuing of newsletters.

The European Commission arranged a special experts workshop together with the Ispra Joint Research Centre and LCE-SEMCo, with the objective of discussing technical issues related mainly to life cycle assessment, CO2-calculations and toolkit design.

Sixty selected LCA experts were invited to a workshop on April 14, 2008 at the Joint Research Centre in Ispra, Italy.

An ad hoc questionnaire regarding the main issues related with the project was sent out to the participants prior to the meeting in order to list the key issues to be discussed, including carbon footprint in the EU Ecolabel.

2.5 Task 4, diffusion and dissemination

With the aim of obtaining views and feedback from key stakeholders and interested parties in relation to the project, its expected results and its deliverables. The main purpose of these activities was to discuss how to communicate carbon footprint information to consumers, specifically in relation to the incorporation of such information into the EU Ecolabel.

This was based on five different elements:

  1. 1.

    A specific web site providing all the necessary project information (such as consultation results, newsletters, etc)

  2. 2.

    Meetings with stakeholders and selected key organisations

  3. 3.

    Enabling internet stakeholder consultations to get feedback on outcome of stakeholder meeting results

  4. 4.

    Participation in EU meeting on the carbon footprint topic with presentations of the project work

  5. 5.

    Issuing and delivering four specific newsletters to over 1,000 stakeholders around the world with information on the project work

3 Results, discussion and conclusions

While the key goal of the project technical aspects dealt with the measurement toolkit implementation, the communication activities aimed at involving the key stakeholders in order to obtain their views and opinions relevant to the project. The latter was considered very important, especially from a strategic point of view, to gain consensus, to receive back suggestions and, in perspective, to consolidate the approach to the issue.

The most significant experiences were: the workshop with experts (JRC-ISPRA, 04/14/08), the discussion concerning the strategic role of CO2 in the Ecolabel within an ad hoc working group (03/04/08, 04/22/08: both encounters in Brussels) and an exchange of ideas with some relevant retailers in Europe (e.g. Tesco, UK and COOP Italia).

Following these consultations, it was possible to group the main topics and various open issues, as follows:

  1. 1.

    Main conclusions of the consultation phase are:

    • the Flower may include criteria, with limits on life cycle GHG emissions, as for other specific issues

    • carbon footprint criteria should not necessarily, however, be included in all flower product groups: the criteria implementation/revision process should decide on the use of inclusion of a specific carbon footprint criterion or not at the same time, a figure concerning CO2 emissions of product life cycle should not be displayed below the flower logo

    • applicant participation in offset programmes during the flower procedure should not be considered as reduction of CO2 emissions

  2. 2.

    Main specific technical aspects that emerged from the consultation phase are:

    • biological CO2 should be considered as both air emission and as carbon credit on the wood-based product

    • the CF tool should rely on a specific database; although, the applicant should have the possibility to input their own data as appropriate; in other words, the applicant should have the possibility to input their own data in some cases, where such data can be properly verified

    • the specific database should be based on publicly available data. Preference should be given to databases meeting the requirements of the ILCD, currently under development and coordinated in Europe by the JRC IES at Ispra. These data sources will include the European Life Cycle Database.

  3. 3.

    Some remaining open issues that should be taken into account by the Ad Hoc Working Group (see Fig. 2 for details) during the specific PG criteria revision are:

    Fig. 2
    figure 2

    Flow chart of the main important decisions that have to be made during the revision of the EU Ecolabel criteria for the carbon footprint inclusion. Usually, the open-up activities for the development of a new or the revision of an existing product group (PG) deal with the necessity to actively involve all potentially interested parties by knowledge diffusion in order to build a sound team of experts, the so-called Ad Hoc Working Group (AHWG). The AHWG is therefore created in order to develop a transparent and wide discussion with reference stakeholders, concerned manufacturers, consumers and environmental associations at a European level, and has the goal of supporting the criteria definition with technical advice to the whole of the EUEB (European Union Ecolabel Board). This is done by giving regular feedback on work progress to the whole of the EUEB in three or four of their meetings during each PG criteria development

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    • energy mixes: how to provide the applicant with the possibility to adopt their own country energy mix

    • end of life: how to provide the applicant with the possibility of integrating the carbon footprint calculations by means of end-of-life scenario data

It is clear that toolkit modification (with particular regard to the database content) will need to be left up to the Ecolabel criteria development/revision process to some extent, in accordance to the specific market trend and LCA analysis of the product group under study.

The carbon footprint measurement software produced for this project therefore consists of an open and accessible database as well as a ‘ready to use’ calculation toolkit that looks at the principle carbon impacts with no intention of providing any reference figure for the materials/processes that are cited.

4 Recommendations and perspectives

Since many of the product groups included in the Flower scheme are very different as far as their life cycles are concerned, it would be quite complicated to define a unique tool suitable for all of them at the same time. In other words, the application of the life cycle thinking approach by means of the LCA methodology must always be linked to the specific system (product group) under investigation.

The measurement toolkit that is provided as the main deliverable of this project has the aim of providing a common basis and a reliable tool for making the approach easy for any of the existing product groups. Therefore, during the process of revision/definition of existing/new criteria there will be the necessity of adding those specific characteristics (such as the above-mentioned remaining open issues) to complete the carbon footprint tool for that specific product.

Finally, a scheme of the decision process that should be made during the revision of the EU Ecolabel criteria to evaluate the possible inclusion of a criterion on carbon footprint is shown in Fig. 2.