This website provides guidance, reporting templates, training materials and policy notes (many of which are available in French, English and Spanish). There are also video tutorials, which demonstrate how to use the content of the website. This website can now support reliable and consistent life cycle assessment (LCA) studies of energy efficient buildings and building products. The guidance will be used for undertaking research projects of the E2B Initiative. The outcomes of the guidance document may also serve as a basis for building LCA tool developers or certification schemes.

The guidance draws on the ILCD handbook developed by the IES in the EC JRC* and EN 15804 and EN 15978 developed by the CEN/TC 350**, and has been separated into two parts: one for products (Part A) and one for buildings (Part B). Both documents are organised by life cycle stages of a building. Important aspects for products and buildings are defined to provide information on how to deal with specific issues (such as how to account for technical building equipment or how to take account of service life).

The EeBGuide Info Hub is the outcome of the European research project ‘EeBGuide – Operational guidance for Life Cycle Assessment Studies of the Energy-Efficient Buildings Initiative’, which ran from November 2011 to October 2012. The project was co-funded as a coordination and support action (CSA) by the European Commission under the Seventh Framework Programme, contract no. 285490. The project was coordinated by the Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics Sustainable Construction Group (Germany). Other members of the consortium were PE International AG (Germany), Centre Scientifique et Technique du Bâtiment (France), Escola Superior de Comerç International (Spain), BRE Global Ltd (UK) and Prof Ch Sjöström Consultancy (Sweden). As members of the review panel, Friderik Knéz and Dr Wolfram Trinius also contributed to the development of the document.

The project was supported by the European Commission under the Environment (including climate change) Theme of the 7th Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development“.

* Institute for Environment and Sustainability in the European Commission Joint Research Centre
** European Committee for Standardization / Technical Committee 350 – Sustainability of construction works