Our technical advocacy:

standards &

life cycle assessment

Technical advocacy and expertise have been key cornerstones of European Aluminium since the Association’s foundation over 40 years ago. Our technical advocacy covers everything from developing aluminium alloys and product-related standards to life cycle assessment models and environmental performance declarations. Our objective is to ensure that all aluminium products comply with the highest health, safety, and environmental requirements and that aluminium’s many sustainability benefits are fully reflected in products and performance declarations.

Our Work

Focus On

Life Cycle Assessment: Assessing the environmental impact of our products

Thanks to our substantial expertise in LCA and industrial know-how, European Aluminium is a recognised partner in European environmental footprint policy – and beyond.

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is the best framework for assessing a product’s potential environmental impacts. It looks at all stages of a product’s life cycle, including the acquisition of raw materials, product fabrication, transportation, use, and end-of-life management.Thanks to its inclusion of end-of-life recycling, LCA is the only model that can truly capture the many benefits of our metal’s endless recyclability.

To facilitate new LCAs, the aluminium industry publishes environmental impact indicators for its main production processes and develops LCA models for a number of aluminium-containing products according to European and international standards. Our industry is also an active contributor to LCA-based methodologies developed by the European Commission, such as the Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) method.

Developed in 2015 and updated in 2019, with the International Aluminium Institute (IAI), we developed a tool to compare the impact of different lightweighting solutions in terms of their net greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions over the full vehicle lifecycle. More info here.

In the course of 2022, the document “Methodological guideline for the environmental assessment of aluminium intermediate and semi-finished products” was drafted. The document is accessible here.

Environmental Declaration of Building Products Programme

Since 2006, European Aluminium has run a programme for the Environmental Declaration of Building Products (EPDs) in which aluminium plays a significant role, such as aluminium windows, doors, curtain walls, composite panels, cladding, or roofing. An EPD is a standardised way to quantify a product’s environmental performance, process, or system and report on it based on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA).

In 2020, European Aluminium updated its EPD programme rules and Products Category Rules (PCR) in order to be aligned with the requirements of the European standards EN 15804:2019 “Sustainability of construction works. Environmental product declarations. Core rules for the product category of construction products”. As required by ISO14025:2010, this update has been reviewed by an external review panel.

European Aluminium is also recognized as Programme Operator by the German Ökobaudat (see here).

The various EPDs developed under the updated European Aluminium EPD program are listed below. Expired EPD’s developed by European Aluminium in the past are listed separately and are available upon request to the programme operator. For all information concerning our EPD Programme, please contact EPD@european-aluminium.eu.