Kate Hickcox
Username
Kate Hickcox
Proposer First Name
Kathryn
Proposer Email
kathryn.hickcox@pnnl.gov
Proposer Last Name
Hickcox
Proposer Company/Organization
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Proposer Phone
(971) 940-7119
Proposer Job Title
Energy + Environment Research Scientist
Boston 2023 Areas of Focus
Proposer Additional Info
I presented on a lighting related topic at last year's BuildingEnergy Boston, thank you!
Proposed Session Description
A level-playing field is critical to the success and consistency of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) process used in any Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) program. It is essential to ensure that EPDs can be accurately compared and used to inform decision-making, especially for public procurement and utilization of EPD results as public data sources in other product inventories. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) has been working with leading U.S. and international stakeholders to develop and refine a digitized LCI tool for luminaire products. The digitized luminaire LCI tool has high potential for significant impact in the lighting and electrical equipment industries, and beyond.
Diversity and Inclusiveness
Equity is a core aspect of the project that will be discussed in this presentation. This project is driving the lighting industry’s path to adopting LCAs, and the work is a human story as much as a data story. Climate change is a human story and an equity story. The presentation will highlight some PNNL research into best practices and recommendations for including social equity metrics into LCA practice. Energy Equity and Environmental Justice metrics are included in our LCI tool and we will discuss this in the presentation.
Learning Objectives
Compare the latest industry developments to bridge the data gap on lighting, electrical and MEP products
Summarize the critical aspects of the LCI/LCI approach that support improved comparability and transparency of LCAs and EPDs in North America
Understand the impact of the tools and approaches have been developed from this project for improving the quality and comparability of Life Cycle Assessment reporting
Discuss how collective action, community, and common ground are critical to reaching our decarbonization goals
Has this session been presented before?
No
Additional Comments
We have proposed other sessions on this work, but no presentations on this work have been given yet
Session Format
Presentation followed by facilitated discussion or breakout groups
Session Format Details
We will present for 40 minutes on this topic, followed by a Q&A and some poll-taking of the audience. We’d love to get feedback and thoughts on the topic and depending on the group size we could break up into smaller groups to answer some questions in a bit more depth.
Recommended Length
60-minute session
Strongest Content Connection - Boston 2023
Reviewer 1
Chase, Tom
Proposal #
147
Committee Decision
Rejected
Presenters
Full Description
To avoid an irreversible and catastrophic climate change trajectory, we must limit average global temperatures to well below a 2°C increase from pre-industrial levels. Mitigating average global temperature increase is strongly linked to reducing carbon footprints; thus, relevant accounting metrics such as embodied carbon and life cycle footprinting are becoming an increasingly urgent issue.
There are currently many ratings, certifications, corporate pledges, and new regulations driving the building industry to provide sustainability transparency & embodied carbon information. These include regulations that will require the use of Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) (e.g., the Federal BuyClean Regulation and the California Assembly Bill 2446). In addition, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) has tasked the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) with aiding industry to standardize and digitize EPDs. Because EPDs summarize results of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) studies, expanding access to quality LCA data and standardizing LCA approaches within specific product categories are essential to producing quality EPDs. This project focuses on lighting products as a case study: it has been identified that there is a “data gap” in EPDs in lighting and mechanical, electrical & plumbing (MEP) products that could affect many EPD inputs in a whole building LCA.