The EU Single Market for Green Products initiative (SMGP)

Imola Bedő Coordinator on production

DG Environment – Sustainable Production and Consumption Unit

Material 4

International Workshop on Future Utilization of Visualized Information of Environmental Impacts in Product Life Cycle & Corporate Value Chain at Tokyo, Japan

EU institutions

European Commission

Right of initiative

Council of the EU

Setting broad priorities Decision-making

European Parliament

Citizen representation

Decision-making

2

1) Policy context

3

WHY?

• More than 400 environmental labels in the world

• Issues:

• 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?

= Confusion, mistrust

Free-riders win Costs

4

Policy mandates

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.

Single Market Act

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”

Council Conclusions 20 December 2010

Resource Efficiency 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 refining eco-labelling schemes (in 2012)

5

Policy links

SMGP

Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP)

GPP Ecodesign

Industrial policy

Single Market Act

Non-financial reporting

Research

6

2) Method development

7

Analysis of existing methodologies

Final methodological guide

Draft methodology guides

Stakeholder consultation on the policy options

Pilot tests concluded

June 2011

20 Dec 2011

1st Quarter 2013

March 2011

Training on methodology

February 2012

Product Environmental

footprint

Invited Stakeholder Meeting 28-30 November 2011

January 2011 – April 2012

Organisation Environmental

footprint

September 2011

13-15 July 2011 19-20 Oct 2011

Timelines

PEFCR/OEFSR testing Mid-2013?

8

The Environmental Footprint:

• Builds on existing methods

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

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

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

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

Features 9

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

10

Defining the goal and scope of the study;

Defining relevant/irrelevant impact categories;

Identifying appropriate system boundaries for the analysis;

Identifying key parameters and life-cycle stages;

Providing guidance on possible data sources;

Completing the Resource Use and Emissions Profile phase;

Providing further specification on how to solve multi-

functionality problems.

PEFCRs & OEFSRs 11

Challenges

• Life Cycle data, data quality & availability

• Need to develop consistent product and sector-specific rules

• Involvement of stakeholders (particularly SMEs)

• The verification system

• Need for international dialogue

3) Stakeholder consultation

13

14

Running from 11 January 2012 until 3 April 2012

426 respondents

Covering the following areas:

Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP) and

Sustainable Industry Policy (SIP)

Green Public Procurement (GPP)

Actions for improving the environmental performance of

products (Product Environmental Footprint – PEF)

Actions for improving the environmental performance of

organisations (Organisations’ Environmental Footprint –

OEF).

The consultation

PEF overall findings

General agreement that current policies should be adjusted and

strengthened, not move to a new regulatory framework Support for the development of voluntary PEF scheme, based on a

reliable and scientifically validated methodology 48% of private companies and 45% of industry associations agree

that PEF would improve the environmental performance of products Many responses stressed the importance to support the PEF

methodology with robust and freely available life cycle data Support for development of product category rules, product

benchmarks, simplification for SMEs and international coordination Some stakeholders urged for a global harmonisation Doubts on the ability of private consumers to understand the

information based on PEF. Fewer parameters focusing on hot spots was preferred over displaying all environmental impacts

15

OEF overall findings

Main drivers: opportunity for financial savings (93%) and strategic importance for future competitiveness (88%);

Main barriers: lack of time and expertise, lack of consistency between existing initiatives and insufficient market rewards;

Main problems with existing activities: not all risks are captured, multiple initiatives and ways of reporting;

SMEs: simplified approach at EU level - targeted information, incentives and support at national level;

Broad support for elements of EU action – efforts to align approaches internationally (40% strong agreement), performance improvement through common approach, improving reliability of information, meaningful incentives (74%)

Policy option most preferred: recommendation to MS on the use of the common methodology, EU promotion of the methodology on a voluntary basis.

16

4) Next steps

17

Next steps

Promoting ONE method instead of MANY in the EU

3-year testing

Continuing international activities

Dialogue at governmental level hosted by UNEP Capacity building by UNEP for main developing trading partners

on Life Cycle Assessment, environmental footprinting, life cycle data generation

Development of SME support tools

Improve access to good quality life cycle data

18

Testing 2013

Objectives

1. Test the process for the development of PEFCRs and OEFSRs

2. Test different approaches for verification systems (embedded impacts, traceability)

3. Communication vehicles

The Commission will "lead" a limited number of pilots but there will also be a "call for volunteers" addressed to Member States or industries who might like to lead the development of more PEFCRs and/or OEFSRs.

The pilot can be on an intermediate or a final product.

There is no obligation to run both a PEF and OEF pilot

19

Testing 2013

European Commission to provide "rules of the game": Governance Rules for representativeness for a sector or product group Main milestones of the pilot European Commission support expected: Technical helpdesk Testing of verification

WHO can propose a pilot:

1. Single companies 2. Cluster of companies 3. National, European or non-European industry associations 4. NGOs 5. Member States or non EU governments 6. Any mix of the organisations mentioned above

20

Testing 2013

Main milestones during the pilot – e.g. PEF Definition of the scope Modelling the “representative” product (that becomes the benchmark) Screening PEF study applied to the “representative product” Identification of the most relevant impacts and processes Definition of relevant PEFCR requirements (including additional

environmental information not based on PEF screening results) Application of the PEFCR to “real” products Verification of 1-2 verification approaches The values calculated on real products are used to define the classes

of performance against the respective values calculated for the benchmark

Identification of 3-4 suitable communication vehicles (B2B and/or B2C)

Test of the communication vehicles in real cases

21

LCA 1 cup of coffee

Environmental impacts

Water

Resources

Climate

Verified by …

E

NO PEFCR (2012) WITH PEFCR (fictitious example; possible if PEFCR available)

Performance level B

Performance level C

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)

EXAMPLE - RESULTS

COMMUNICATING RESULTS

vs. vs. Performance level A

22

Future

Evaluation of pilot results

Decision on future policy applications

23

For any further information

http://ec.europa.eu/environment/eussd/product_footprint.htm http://ec.europa.eu/environment/eussd/corporate_footprint.htm

env-environmental-footprint@ec.europa.eu

24