---
title: "ISO 14025:2026 reflects the growing maturity of the global EPD ecosystem"
description: "On 24 June 2026 ISO published the biggest update to the EPD standard since 2006. The six changes look unrelated but form one sequence: tightened terminology, a harder boundary against unverified claims, mandatory harmonisation, verified digital tools, formalised prospective EPDs, and a governance regime built for a regulated market."
author: "Verdatir Research"
date: 2026-07-10
category: "Research"
tags: ["EPD", "ISO 14025", "Sustainability", "Regulation", "Verification"]
canonical: https://verdatir.com/insights/iso-14025-2026-epd-ecosystem-maturity
publisher: Verdatir (https://verdatir.com)
license: © Verdatir AB. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL.
---

# ISO 14025:2026 reflects the growing maturity of the global EPD ecosystem

> On 24 June 2026 ISO published the biggest update to the EPD standard since 2006. The six changes look unrelated but form one sequence: tightened terminology, a harder boundary against unverified claims, mandatory harmonisation, verified digital tools, formalised prospective EPDs, and a governance regime built for a regulated market.

When ISO 14025 first came out in 2006, Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) were a fairly niche way to report a product's environmental footprint. Since then, they've become central to different use cases such as green building certification, sustainable procurement, carbon reporting, and product transparency. As the ecosystem grew, so did the pressure for a clearer structure behind it.

On 24 June 2026, ISO published the biggest update to the EPD standard since the original 2006 edition. Listed out, the six changes look unrelated. They aren't: each one sets up the building block for the next.

## 1. Terminology is comprehensively updated

For twenty years the ISO 14020 family split environmental communication into Type I (ecolabels), Type II (self-declared claims), and Type III (LCA-based declarations). Almost nobody in practice asked for "a Type III declaration for this insulation panel." They asked for an EPD. ISO 14025:2026 catches up to that usage: an EPD is now defined directly as an independently verified, LCA-based environmental statement, and the Type I/II/III language is dropped from the standard altogether. "Type III environmental declaration," "environmental label," and "environmental declaration" are formally deprecated in favor of this one unified term, closing a gap where practitioners already said "EPD" colloquially while the formal documents still said "Type III", a mismatch that caused real confusion in tenders and green building credit submissions. It also shuts down a specific abuse pattern the old terminology quietly enabled: manufacturers marketing self-declared claims as fictitious "Type II EPDs," borrowing the credibility of the EPD name for a declaration that never went through independent verification.

This kind of cleanup isn't unique to this standard. ISO 14001:2026, published earlier this year, made a similar move elsewhere in its text, retiring older inherited jargon once a standard has matured past the point where it still adds clarity.

The same push for precision runs through the rest of the standard's vocabulary. ISO 14025:2026 introduces or tightens definitions for general programme instructions (GPI), EPD tool, a formally defined declared unit, and environmental performance, and it replaces the vague 2006 term "predetermined parameters" with the more specific "predetermined impact/inventory indicators." A full chain-of-custody vocabulary, covering mass balance, credit method, and book-and-claim, is imported from ISO 22095, signaling that programme operators are now expected to explicitly address how mixed or attributed data is handled rather than leaving it implicit.

Naming these terms clearly only helps if the standard's own place in the ISO family is just as clear. ISO 14025 is no longer standalone: its core principles have moved up into the revised ISO 14020, making 14025 a specialization within a broader family that also pulls in ISO/TS 14027, which governs how PCRs are developed, and ISO/TS 14029, which governs how operators recognise each other's work, as normative references rather than optional guidance. Requirements are now split cleanly into general requirements inherited from ISO 14020 versus EPD-programme-specific requirements, which makes the standard easier to keep synchronised as the broader 14020 umbrella evolves. That structural realignment is what makes the next change possible. Once EPD sits inside a defined family with a defined scope, the standard can draw a much harder line around what falls outside that scope entirely.

## 2. The boundary around the terminology got stricter

ISO 14025:2026 states directly that self-declared claims under ISO 14021 and ecolabels under ISO 14024 don't count as EPDs, or as a type of EPD. Once "EPD" carries more weight as a trusted term, the standard has to be equally clear about what sits outside it.

That line matters because the market it's protecting is genuinely messy. The European Commission's own analysis found that over half of the green claims it examined were vague, misleading, or unfounded, and identified around 230 different sustainability labels circulating across the EU with wildly inconsistent levels of transparency. ISO 14025:2026 is drawing a harder line against that confusion from the standards side.

The EU is arriving at a similar point from the regulatory side, on its own separate timeline. The proposed Green Claims Directive is a messier story on its own. In June 2025 the European Commission announced that it intended to withdraw the proposal, after pushback over how far it would reach. Yet it still hasn't taken the formal step, so the proposal sits stuck in between: not dead, but not moving forward either.

A different law, already in force, is closing much of the same gap on its own. The Directive on Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition (EmpCo), in force since March 2024 and applying to businesses from 27 September 2026, only allows a sustainability label if it's established by a public authority or backed by an independent, third-party certification scheme. Companies inventing their own trust marks won't be able to use them after that date.

Two different processes, one technical standard and one binding consumer law, are converging on the same idea at roughly the same time: unverified environmental claims are losing legitimacy, and who verifies matters more than the label itself. For companies that already hold an EPD, that's an advantage rather than a new compliance cost. The verification was already built in.

## 3. Harmonisation becomes non-negotiable

A clean definition doesn't solve a separate problem: roughly fifteen to twenty EPD programme operators are active within Europe alone (IBU in Germany, EPD International in Sweden, EPD Norge, EPD Danmark, GlobalEPD in Spain, and others), each running its own General Programme Instructions and PCR library. Most build on the same core standard, EN 15804, so PCRs from different operators end up containing almost identical methodology anyway. In practice, a manufacturer selling across three or four European markets can still end up navigating three or four separate registries, verification processes, and slightly different interpretations of the same rules.

Left alone, this fragmentation tends to widen rather than shrink. France's operator, INIES, discontinued its membership in the cross-programme harmonisation body ECO Platform at the end of 2024 and stopped acting as an ECO Platform operator from 1 January 2025, choosing to run independently instead.

The European Commission already tried solving a version of this problem from a different angle: a single centralised methodology, the Product Environmental Footprint (PEF), with Category Rules approved directly by the Commission. The idea was that one methodology, defined centrally, would remove fragmentation by design. The results have been mixed. A peer-reviewed comparison of PEF and EN 15804 EPDs for construction products found the two methods have different enough requirements that their results can't really be compared or used interchangeably. Centralising the rulebook didn't remove fragmentation. It just moved it from many operators down to two competing systems.

ISO 14025:2026 is making a different bet. Rather than centralising authority in one body, it keeps programme operators independent but makes ISO/TS 14027 and ISO/TS 14029 normative references instead of optional guidance, backed by a new informative annex addressing PCR and programme harmonisation for comparability, tied directly to both technical specifications. Mutual recognition arrangements (MRAs) are woven into operator requirements throughout, rather than left as a voluntary add-on, which moves comparability from an aspirational goal into an actual process with defined mechanisms. IBU and EPD Norge have had a signed, working bilateral mutual recognition agreement on this basis since 2014, a reasonable proof point that convergence doesn't need a single owner, just a shared and enforced process for getting there.

The revision also tackles a subtler version of the comparability problem: two EPDs for the same product category can carry the "EPD" name while resting on very different amounts and quality of underlying data. Programmes must now classify each EPD by criteria such as the number of products or facilities covered, the percentage of GWP from supply-chain-specific data versus generic background data, the life cycle stages included, and the months of primary data used, and this classification has to appear on the declaration itself. It's a shift toward comparability with honesty rather than comparability by assumption. It distinguishes a single-facility EPD built on a full year of primary data from an industry-average EPD leaning heavily on generic background data, without banning either one. This convergence has to reach the tools generating the data too, not just the paperwork.

## 4. Digital EPD tools got officially recognised

Harmonising PCRs on paper only goes so far if the software producing the underlying LCA data isn't held to the same bar. ISO 14025:2026 introduces new terminology and requirements for EPD tools, including a requirement that the tools themselves go through independent verification, not just the EPD output they generate. For the first time, "EPD tool" is a formally defined term, and programme operators are required to set explicit verification requirements for tools rather than only reviewing what a tool produces. A verified tool can unlock streamlined verification for the individual EPDs it generates, rewarding a single rigorous engine check that then applies to every output the tool produces afterward, a meaningful efficiency gain for manufacturers running many similar products through the same software. That efficiency is deliberately paired with an independence rule: automation is endorsed, but only if the tool's verifier isn't the vendor itself, a caveat that connects directly to the broader independence requirements described later in this revision.

That shift lands right as a much bigger digital requirement arrives from EU regulation. Under the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation and the revised Construction Products Regulation, the EU's Digital Product Passport won't replace EPDs, but is expected to reference and embed EPD data directly in structured, machine-readable form. The Battery Passport is first, mandatory from February 2027, with construction and other product groups following on a phased schedule after that.

The sequence makes sense together: harmonised PCRs mean the same product category gets assessed the same way everywhere, and verified tools mean the resulting data can be trusted enough to flow automatically into a legally mandated passport, instead of sitting in a PDF that only a person ever opens.

These changes ensure the consistency within the processes and tool providers; however, there is no specific emphasis on LLMs and non-deterministic generation of the datapoints. As a result the standardisation in processing might not solve the complete inconsistency and data quality issue, but is a step in the right direction.

## 5. "Prospective EPDs" defined as a part of the standard

Once the definition is precise, the boundary is clear, the methodology is converging, and the tools are verified, ISO 14025:2026 can do something it couldn't have done casually back in 2006: let EPDs be published before a full year of production data exists. This revision formally introduces requirements for prospective EPDs, built from data on a comparable existing EPD, inventory data for similar technologies already on the market, or forecast and design data from a manufacturing plant. Programme operators have already been offering informal versions of this for years. What changes is that it's now written into the international standard with defined requirements, including explicit guardrails: limited validity periods, mandatory annual re-evaluation against actual data as it becomes available, clear labeling so a prospective EPD is never mistaken for a fully verified one, and formal quantification of the uncertainty involved. That matters for companies that need an EPD to unlock financing or bid on a tender before they've completed a full reference year of data.

There's a useful comparison in carbon markets, which ran into the same trade-off earlier. Project-based carbon crediting distinguishes ex-ante crediting, issued against forecast future reductions before a project is fully operational, from ex-post crediting, issued once measured performance data exists. Ex-ante credits unlock financing for projects that couldn't get built otherwise; ex-post credits are the ones markets treat as fully robust. Prospective EPDs sit in the same space: deliberately less rigorous, clearly labelled as such, and useful precisely because they let innovation get financed before the historical data catches up.

The open risk is the same one carbon markets have already dealt with: "prospective" quietly becoming the default instead of the exception. Whether programme operators keep that distinction sharp in their own General Programme Instructions is the real test, and the annual re-evaluation requirement is the standard's main lever for keeping that discipline in place rather than leaving it to goodwill.

## 6. Governance and verification requirements get spelled out in more detail

Everything above, the tighter definition, the harder boundary, the harmonisation push, the verified tools, the disciplined use of prospective data, depends on one thing: that verification itself can be trusted. ISO 14025:2026 addresses that directly, with stronger emphasis on independence, impartiality, and conflict-of-interest management throughout EPD programme processes. This is the biggest structural tightening in the revision. "Third party" is now explicitly defined as independent of the manufacturer, the programme operator, the LCA practitioner, and, notably, the EPD tool developer. Independence is also folded into the definition of "verifier" itself, upgraded from someone who merely carries out verification to a party who is explicitly competent and independent. This directly targets arrangements where verifiers were trained, approved, or supplied by the same entity whose tool or scheme they were checking, closing a loophole the old definition left open.

That same logic extends to how reviews are organised. PCR review and EPD verification must now run as two entirely separate processes, the PCR review panel must have at least a chair plus two members, and programme operators must implement formal policies to identify, disclose, and manage conflicts of interest across operators, verifiers, and panel members. This closes loopholes where in-house reviewers were still labeled "third party" despite having ties to the scheme or tool being assessed.

These verification rules sit inside a much broader governance overhaul for programme operators. The 2026 edition converts a short list of operator duties into an extensive governance checklist: disclosing ownership, governance, and revenue structures, publishing GPIs and public digital registries of PCRs and EPDs, running transparent PCR development with voting and public consultation, maintaining complaints procedures that cover already-published EPDs, adopting anti-trust policies, and actively participating in mutual recognition arrangements. Read together, this looks less like a simple labeling standard and more like a governance regime built for a regulated market, likely anticipating tightening EU and US green claims regulation rather than waiting for it. One piece of this tightening takes effect with no phase-in at all: for consumer-facing EPDs specifically, all verification must be third-party and the verifier must be named in the declaration. It's the most immediate, hard deadline embedded in the revision, with far less room for gradual transition than the operator-level governance changes.

This isn't happening to EPDs alone. ISO 14001:2026 separately strengthened internal audit rigour and extended accountability across the value chain. ISO has also published a dedicated horizontal standard for this exact problem, the new ISO 14019 series, which sets out requirements for the competence and impartiality of bodies that validate or verify sustainability information, and distinguishes validation of forward-looking assumptions (relevant to the prospective EPDs above) from verification of historical, declared data.

EPDs aren't being singled out here. They're catching up to a governance bar ISO is raising across its sustainability standards at the same time, which is part of why the rest of this revision holds together. Because ISO 14025 remains a voluntary standard with no automatic enforcement mechanism, none of this lands on day one across the board. A staggered rollout is the realistic expectation: GPI and terminology updates likely come first, verifier approval and tool verification procedure changes follow, and the unwinding of conflict-of-interest arrangements the new "third party" definition no longer permits comes last, simply because those arrangements take longer to dismantle than they took to build.

## What this doesn't change

None of this changes how an LCA itself is done. ISO 14040 and ISO 14044 remain the methodological foundation, untouched by this revision. What ISO 14025:2026 changes is everything around it: what counts as an EPD, what doesn't, who has to agree on the rules, whose tools are trusted to produce the data, how early that data can responsibly be shared, and who's accountable for checking all of it.

## Where the six changes land

Put the six pieces back together and they read as one sequence rather than six separate updates. Fixing the term first (1) is what makes it worth defending with a hard boundary (2). A defended term is what makes harmonised methodology across a dozen-plus operators (3) worth pursuing instead of ignoring. Harmonised methodology is what makes it safe to trust software that automates part of the process (4). Trusted tools and converging methodology are what make it defensible to publish an EPD before a full year of data exists (5). And every one of those five steps only holds up if the verification underneath all of it is genuinely independent (6), which is why governance is the load-bearing change rather than the last item on the list.

The practical read for anyone holding or issuing EPDs: the rule on named, third-party verification for consumer-facing declarations is the one item that needs attention now, since it carries no phase-in window at all. Everything else, terminology updates, tool verification procedures, the unwinding of conflicted review arrangements, will phase in on the operators' own schedules rather than all at once.

The next phase of EPDs will be defined by clarity, consistency, and credibility. That's where real progress begins.