# Verdatir: complete site text > Verdatir is quality infrastructure for sustainability data: the trust layer of rules, evidence, review and lineage that lets environmental data be used without re-checking it. Its first product, an AI-assisted review engine, verifies Environmental Product Declarations, Product Carbon Footprints and supplier environmental data against EN 15804, ISO 14025, ISO 14067, PEF, PACT and CBAM, with a tamper-evident audit trail. Generated 2026-09-28 from https://verdatir.com. © Verdatir AB. Quote with attribution and link to the canonical URL. # Site pages ## Verdatir | Trust layer for sustainability data URL: https://verdatir.com/ Verdatir builds trust in environmental data. It is quality infrastructure for sustainability data: the shared layer of encoded rule sets, evidence bound to every value, accountable review, version-controlled lineage and a tamper-evident audit trail that lets an environmental number be used without re-checking it. That infrastructure is built to serve verification programmes, supply-chain data exchange and regulatory reporting as well as individual reviews. **First product: the review engine.** An intelligent review engine for product sustainability data that delivers compliance and credibility across suppliers, customers and investors. It collects supplier and product data, validates it against standard and Product Category Rule (PCR) requirements with AI assistance, aligns it across frameworks, routes it through qualified reviewer sign-off, and publishes a sealed, auditable output. The six engine stages are: Collect, Validate, Align, Review, Verify, Publish. **Standards and frameworks supported:** EN 15804+A2, ISO 14025, ISO 14067, ISO 14040/44, ISO 21930, GHG Protocol, PEF / OEF, PACT Pathfinder, Catena-X, CBAM, Digital Product Passport, plus buyer-specific data requirements as custom rule sets. **Use cases.** - Product Carbon Footprints (ISO 14067, GHG Protocol, PACT): traceable PCF review output with lineage preserved. - EPD verification (EN 15804+A2, ISO 21930, PCR): audit-ready EPD review aligned to PCR rules. - Supplier environmental data (Catena-X, PACT, ISO 14040/44): validated supplier data, lineage preserved end to end. - CBAM / PEF / Digital Product Passport readiness: regulator-aligned submissions with a full audit trail. **Who it is for.** Manufacturers and suppliers; LCA platforms and dataset providers; sustainability consultants; EPD programme operators; financial institutions; standards bodies and regulators. **Ecosystem.** Verdatir works with organisations including Scania, Lyten, EcoDataCenter, ecoinvent, Minviro, Green14, Syre and Permian, and is supported by NyföretagarCentrum Stockholm and the Volta Foundation. **Connectivity.** API-first architecture for supplier data, documents, LCA outputs and reporting systems; approved MCP integrations so Claude, OpenAI and enterprise agents can call Verdatir under governance; role-based, scope-limited access with a tamper-evident audit log. **Security and trust.** TLS 1.3 in transit and AES-256 at rest; EU data residency with backups and disaster recovery; version-controlled verification history with a tamper-evident audit trail; aligned with GDPR; ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Type II in progress. --- ## Platform | One environmental intelligence review engine URL: https://verdatir.com/platform The Verdatir platform is one environmental intelligence review engine: orchestration flow, verification workspace, tamper-evident lineage, cross-standard intelligence and live ecosystem signals, operated as one cohesive platform rather than stitched-together tools. **Orchestration flow (end-to-end pipeline).** 1. Supplier data: primary intake with schema and checksum validation. 2. AI review: a rule engine with LLM assistance applies the applicable rules; anomalies are flagged for a reviewer rather than silently accepted. 3. Framework alignment: ISO, PEF, PACT and Catena-X mappings applied to the same underlying data. 4. Verification layer: multi-reviewer, evidence-bound sign-off. 5. Trusted output: signed, publishable results. 6. Audit trail: every decision recorded against the model, prompt and rule version in force. **Workspace, lineage and frameworks.** A review workspace for practitioners and verifiers, version-controlled lineage for every number, and cross-standard mapping so one dataset can serve several reporting frameworks. **Environmental intelligence.** Live signals across the verification graph: which suppliers, datasets and rules are moving, and where review attention is needed. --- ## Services | Verification and advisory URL: https://verdatir.com/services Verdatir is the enablement and implementation partner for teams adopting AI-assisted review of environmental information. - **SV-01 Verification and assurance.** Expert-led review of EPDs, PCFs and environmental datasets against standards and PCRs, delivered with a full audit trail. - **SV-02 Programme operator support.** Operational support for programme operators running structured verification workflows at scale. - **SV-03 Advisory and implementation.** Strategic and hands-on engagements: framework alignment, data architecture, and verification operating models. We help teams structure their sustainability processes, enable trustworthy reporting, build operational readiness and create long-term internal capability. --- ## Our vision URL: https://verdatir.com/vision **Vision.** To make environmental data something anyone can trust and act on, with the same confidence the world already places in financial data, across standards, systems and borders. **Message from the CEO, Ketan Vaidya.** Money works because €10 means the same thing to everyone, everywhere. You don't audit a banknote before you accept it. Environmental data isn't there yet: the same carbon number can mean very different things depending on how it was measured, what it includes, and who reported it. Yet these numbers increasingly decide what gets bought, financed, built and regulated. Verdatir exists to close that gap, not by pretending the data is simpler than it is, but by making it trustworthy so people can rely on it without re-checking it every time. > "When data can be trusted, it stops being something you report and becomes something you build on." --- ## Contact Verdatir URL: https://verdatir.com/contact Request a demo or ask a question via the contact form at https://verdatir.com/contact, or email ketan@verdatir.com for demos and partnerships. General questions and existing customers: support@verdatir.com. Verdatir AB is based in Stockholm, Sweden. --- ## Careers at Verdatir URL: https://verdatir.com/careers Verdatir is a small, mission-driven team in Stockholm building the trust layer for environmental data. Open roles are listed at https://verdatir.com/careers. Speculative applications are welcome via the contact form. # Insights (articles) ## AI Is Reviewing Sustainability Data. Who Reviews AI? URL: https://verdatir.com/insights/ai-is-reviewing-sustainability-data-who-reviews-ai Markdown: https://verdatir.com/insights/ai-is-reviewing-sustainability-data-who-reviews-ai.md Author: Verdatir · Published: 2026-08-17 Category: Research · Tags: AI, CSRD, Assurance, Governance, EPD, PCR > AI hasn't earned its way into sustainability review; it was pulled in because manual review cannot scale to CSRD, LCA, and EPD volumes. The real question is not whether AI should check the data, but whether AI-assisted review can be governed so that a named, accountable person still answers for the result. Life cycle assessment (LCA) studies and disclosures under the EU's Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) runs through thousands of individual claims: emission factors, product category rule (PCR) clauses, double materiality assessments covering both a company's environmental impact and the financial risks it faces. Each claim requires a qualified human sign off. However, there simply aren't enough qualified reviewers to do that by hand at the volume the frameworks now require. Sustainability reporting has a volume problem before it has an accuracy problem, and that is the opening AI walks into. ## Necessity before trust AI hasn't earned its way into the review role. It was pulled in because the alternative, manual review at current volume, doesn't scale. That distinction matters, as trust in AI as a reviewer isn't established, it's assumed by necessity, and the two are not the same thing. An institution can adopt a tool because it has no better option and still owe itself a hard look at whether the tool deserves the role it's been handed. The volume hasn't eased either. The EU's Omnibus I Directive narrowed how many companies fall under CSRD, but the companies still in scope face the same double materiality reporting requirements as before. Fewer filers, same depth per filer. The pressure that pulled AI into review in the first place hasn't relaxed, it's just concentrated on a smaller set of reports that are each just as dense as they were. A narrower scope was never going to be the thing that settled the question of whether AI belongs in the review chain. What AI actually changes is what gets checked at all. A human reviewer working through a report has to sample: pull a handful of emission factors, spot check a few PCR clauses, and hope the pattern holds across the rest. Fatigue sets in a few hundred datapoints into a report that runs to thousands, and the inconsistencies that slip through tend to be the quiet ones, a boundary assumption that shifted halfway through, a clause addressed in spirit but not in the specific wording the standard requires. AI can cross-check every emission factor against its source, flag every PCR clause that's only partially addressed, and catch exactly those quiet inconsistencies. That's not a marginal improvement on the old process. It's a different process altogether, checking a different fraction of the report, and a wider fraction checked isn't automatically a more reliable check. Coverage and trust are two different questions. One asks how much of the report got checked and the other asks how much confidence we have on the checker itself. AI answers the first convincingly however, the second still remains unresolved. Which raises the actual question: whether or not AI should review sustainability data, since the volume math already answered that, but whether AI review can avoid becoming the failure point the review step exists to catch. ## A trust built for a person The standards governing this work were not written with a non-human reviewer in mind. The International Organization for Standardization's (ISO) 14044 critical review, a PCR verifier's sign off, Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol assurance: all three are built around a named, accountable person. The artifact of trust in each case isn't just the number that got approved but the professional judgment of the person who approved it, and the fact that they can be asked, later and by someone else, to walk through why. AI doesn't fit cleanly into that role. It can flag an anomaly, but it can't be cross examined about its reasoning the way a verifier can. A verifier who accepted an unusual boundary assumption can explain, on the record, why that assumption was reasonable for this product and this context. A model that flagged or cleared the same assumption has no equivalent account to give. Whether that gap matters comes down to governance: governance is what decides if AI stays a support function underneath the accountable person, or quietly erodes the premise that a human is the one actually answering for the result. ## The chain that has to hold Good governance follows a specific sequence. AI flags an issue, a qualified human confirms or overrides that flag, and provides reasoning. That decision gets logged against the exact model and prompt version that produced the flag, because a model updated between one reporting cycle and the next can flag differently on the same underlying data, and a decision log that doesn't say which version was in use can't tell anyone whether that's what happened. Break any one link and the chain stops doing its job. An AI flag nobody acts on is noise, indistinguishable from a false positive. There is no way to tell whether or not it was actually catching something real, because acting on it is what proves its value. The same logic applies to a human override, with no stated reasoning, nobody can reconstruct why the call was made, neither by an auditor checking the file nor by the reviewer's own future self trying to remember the call. A model update that isn't tracked against the decisions it produced makes last year's results and this year's results incomparable, even when nothing else about the underlying report has changed. Governance is the difference between "AI touched this" and something a person can actually trace, question, and defend. Without it, the first phrase is all anyone can honestly say, and it isn't an answer to the question an auditor is actually asking. ## The template already forming CSRD assurance itself is still being defined. Omnibus I dropped what had been a planned move toward reasonable assurance, a higher evidentiary bar than the limited assurance most disclosures still face. The European Commission is due to publish harmonized limited assurance standards by mid 2027. Whatever bar eventually applies, the assurance statement is still issued by a named, accredited provider who is accountable for it, regardless of whether or not AI touched the file along the way. The clearest version of the pattern so far is showing up earlier in the pipeline, on the preparation side of environmental product declarations (EPD). AI tools are already interpreting PCR requirements, flagging data gaps, and suggesting system boundaries. What hasn't moved is the step after: an independent, accredited verifier still has to review the submission and sign off before an EPD can be published. This pattern isn't a settled template across sustainability reporting yet, but more a shape both frameworks keep landing on: whatever AI touches earlier in the process, a named person still has to be the one who signs at the end. ## Judgment, not scale This division changes what the human reviewer's job actually is, in both directions at once. It narrows in scope: judging the anomalies AI surfaces rather than trying to catch everything cold across a report, rather than reading too closely. Such procedures deepens accountability: the reasoning behind a confirmation or an override has to be explicit enough to survive an audit, not just sit in the reviewer's head as professional intuition nobody asked them to write down. Trust in AI assisted review will end up resting on the strength and traceability of such governance trails, not on how fast or sophisticated the underlying tool is. A faster model that skips the logging step is not a more trustworthy reviewer. It's an unaccountable one that happens to work quickly, and speed was never the thing the review step was built to protect. The review step exists to catch failure and a faster failure point is still a failure point nonetheless. --- ## Verification Infrastructure Is the Product URL: https://verdatir.com/insights/verification-infrastructure-is-the-product Markdown: https://verdatir.com/insights/verification-infrastructure-is-the-product.md Author: Verdatir · Published: 2026-08-12 · Updated: 2026-08-17 Category: Research · Tags: Verification, EPD, CSRD, Assurance, Governance, Programme Operators > Sustainability standards rely on accredited verifiers, but the real product of any programme is the verification infrastructure behind it. Consistency, independence, scalable capacity, and continuous feedback loops are what make a standard trustworthy in the market. Verdatir argues that verification should be engineered as a core design element, not treated as background plumbing. Sustainability standards programmes work by delegation. The body that writes the rules, whether that is EPD International's Product Category Rules (PCRs) or the EU's Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), hands the actual checking to a separate accredited verifier. The standard gets set in one place and confirmed in another, and the programme operator's job stops well short of the moment a specific project or company is judged compliant. That split leaves a mismatch nobody designs away on its own. Trust is handed off to the verifier, but the reputational risk stays with the programme operator's name. When a certified project turns out to be wrong, the market does not go looking for the accreditation body that signed off on it. It blames the standard, because the standard is the name it recognizes. ## Consistency Matters More Than Individual Compliance The instinct is to treat verification as plumbing: necessary, but not part of the programme's core design, something that runs in the background. That instinct is wrong, because a methodology is never applied mechanically, it is interpreted. Two accredited verifiers working from the same rulebook can read a boundary condition, an allocation choice, or a data gap differently, and both can be technically compliant while landing on different answers. What holds a programme together is not each verifier's individual compliance. It is the consistency across all of them. A single verifier can pass every audit of its own work and still be part of the problem, if the answer it reaches would not survive being handed to a different verifier working the same file. Without cross-checks and shared guidance, the market stops trusting the standard itself and starts trusting specific verifiers instead, which defeats the point of having a common standard in the first place. EPD International shows what closing that gap looks like in practice. Its Product Category Rules set the technical rules for a given product category, but the rules alone do not stop the same rule being read differently across countries, industries, or individual verifiers. General Programme Instructions and PCR review committees exist specifically to catch this drift and correct it before it reaches the market, functioning as the mechanism that keeps a PCR meaning consistent with wherever it gets applied. ## Independence Has to Be Engineered The other structural weakness sits in who pays. Under the issuer-pays model, the project developer or the reporting company selects and pays its own verifier. That is a built-in incentive conflict, not a hypothetical one. The verifier's commercial relationship runs directly to the party whose compliance it is judging, and no amount of professional integrity on the verifier's side removes that structure by itself. Independence has to be engineered into the system. It cannot be assumed just because the verifier holds accreditation. The real safeguards are structural, not procedural. Rotating verifiers so no single relationship sets into familiarity. Findings kept visible to parties beyond the client who is paying for them, so a lenient call has an audience that notices. Overseeing bodies with actual sanction authority, not an advisory role that stops at a strongly worded letter. CSRD assurance runs on the same structure. Companies choose and pay their own assurance provider, so the identical conflict sits underneath Europe's flagship reporting regime and under product declaration schemes. The lesson remains the same for both: independence should be checked, not assumed, and a programme that skips the check is trusting the incentive structure to correct itself. ## Verifier Supply Has to Scale Ahead of Demand None of this works if there are not enough qualified verifiers to go around. A safeguard like rotation only functions if there is a genuine pool of independent verifiers to rotate between, rather than a handful of firms trading the same clients back and forth. When supply lags demand, a programme operator has two options, and both are costly in different ways. It can delay issuance, which is visible, unpopular, and gets corrected by market pressure fairly quickly because everyone can see the backlog. Or it can lower accreditation standards to clear it, which is invisible right up until the damage it caused surfaces later. Sweden's SWEDAC, accredited within the European cooperation for Accreditation network, shows the bottleneck concretely. As CSRD and EPD demand both grow, they draw on the same limited pool of nationally accredited capacity, and that capacity becomes the binding constraint on the whole system rather than the methodology or the willingness of companies to comply. A standard can be well-written and still fail in the market if the pipeline of people qualified to check it cannot keep pace with the number of projects and disclosures that need checking. ## From Periodic Audits to Continuous Reconciliation Verification methods built for periodic, sample-based audits assume a world that mostly no longer exists. That model made sense when the underlying data was static and expensive to collect. Satellite imagery, Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, and remote sensing now generate continuous data about the thing being verified, not a snapshot pulled once a year and treated as representative of the whole period. The shift that verification infrastructure needs to make is from a one-time, retrospective judgment to continuous reconciliation: live data checked against the rules as it arrives, with people handling the edge cases and interpretation calls that data alone cannot resolve. That is a different job than auditing, closer to monitoring with judgment built in, and most verification infrastructures are not built to do it. CSRD's digital tagging requirement pushes reporting toward machine-readable data, which is a step in that direction. But the EU's detailed assurance standard covering how that machine-readable data actually gets checked is not due until 1 October 2026. Until then, operators are left to build the bridge themselves, deciding case by case how much of the old sample-based approach still applies to data that no longer arrives in samples. ## Verification Findings Should Feed Back Into the Standard Verifiers are the ones who see where a methodology actually breaks down in the field, before anyone else does. They are the first to hit the ambiguous case, the boundary the rule did not anticipate, the allocation question the drafters never considered. That makes them a source of information the standard itself needs, not just an enforcement layer sitting downstream of it. Operators that build a deliberate feedback loop with verification findings, end up with a standard that improves with use, which is roughly what has happened with European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) updates and with EPD's General Programme Instructions revisions. What a market actually trusts is never the methodology document by itself. It is proof that the document was applied consistently, independently, and at scale, across every verifier working under it and every year the programme runs. That proof is the verification infrastructure, and it is the programme's real product, whether or not the programme was ever designed to treat it that way. --- *This perspective is part of Verdatir's ongoing research on verification infrastructure, programme governance, and the future of sustainability assurance.* --- ## Why Verified LCAs Still Aren't Comparable URL: https://verdatir.com/insights/why-verified-lcas-still-arent-comparable Markdown: https://verdatir.com/insights/why-verified-lcas-still-arent-comparable.md Author: Verdatir · Published: 2026-08-04 · Updated: 2026-08-17 Category: Insights · Tags: LCA, PCR, EPD, Comparability, Data Standards > Third-party verification confirms a life cycle assessment followed its own rules. It says nothing about whether two studies followed the same rules. Comparability needs shared Product Category Rules and a structured format to carry them. A life cycle assessment (LCA) tallies a product's environmental footprint from raw material extraction through disposal. Procurement teams, investors, and regulators expect to know by name, often before a supplier gets shortlisted or a claim gets reported. Third-party verification against ISO, the International Organization for Standardization, is supposed to settle whether that number can be trusted. Two ISO-compliant, third-party verified LCAs can still be incomparable. Verification checks whether a study followed its own stated rules consistently. It says nothing about whether two studies used the same rules as each other. A verified LCA is internally sound but whether it lines up with the LCA sitting next to it is a separate question entirely, and verification was never built to answer it. ## From Data Gap to Comparability Gap Organizations working through life cycle impact tend to pass through the same three stages. First, LCA is not on their radar, as the need hasn't surfaced, which means no studies exist for the product. Then comes a data-collection bottleneck: gathering the material, energy, and process inputs which an LCA needs is slow, and getting suppliers to hand over usable data is even slower. Clearing this bottleneck used to be treated as the finish line. It isn't. Once the LCAs exist, a third stage shows up, and it's the one that actually stalls decisions: the studies are sitting there, produced in good faith, and they still can't be compared to each other. A supplier scorecard, a portfolio-wide reduction target, a claim that one option beats another: all of them assume the underlying numbers were built to matching assumptions. That assumption is usually untested. ## Several Variables, One "Same" Product Two studies of what looks like the same product can diverge from various variables: functional unit, system boundary, impact assessment method, dataset and its version, allocation rules, and geography or end-of-life assumptions. Move any one of those and the result shifts, independent of anything about the product itself. Neither study has to be wrong for the two numbers to be unusable side by side. One example: a systematic review of electric truck life cycle studies found cradle-to-gate carbon footprints ranging from 23 to 313 tonnes of CO2 equivalent, a variation driven entirely by which system boundary was applied, not by any difference between the trucks themselves. Same category of vehicle, honest work in every underlying study, and a range that spans more than tenfold. This reframes the useful question: while faced with two LCAs that disagree, the instinct is to ask which number is correct. However, the better question is whether both assessments were built under the same rules. If they weren't, correctness isn't even on the table yet. The two numbers are answers to different questions that happen to share a unit, and no amount of scrutinizing either one in isolation will make them line up. The scrutiny has to happen upstream, at the level of what each study assumed, not downstream at the level of the figure it produced. ## Rules Solve Half the Problem Product Category Rules, or PCRs, exist to close this gap. A PCR standardizes the assessment rules within a product category: it fixes the functional unit, the system boundary, and the allocation approach so two LCAs in that category finally answer one question instead of two adjacent ones. Where a PCR exists and both studies actually followed it, the comparability problem mostly disappears. However, that is still just half the fix. The other half gets overlooked: format. A PCR governs how a study gets built. It says nothing about how the result gets transmitted to whoever has to use it next, and that handoff is usually where the context disappears. A raw number carries no methodology with it. A PDF buries the functional unit and boundary assumptions in an appendix nobody opens before the number gets copied into a spreadsheet. Both formats strip out exactly the information a reader would need to confirm the rules being actually followed, even when a perfectly good PCR was sitting behind the study the whole time. ## The Missing Format Layer A rulebook without a structured format to carry its outputs is unverifiable at the point of use. An Environmental Product Declaration, or EPD, is the standard document for reporting an LCA result, and a handful of structured, machine-readable formats now carry one, including ILCD+EPD, openEPD, and PACT/Pathfinder. Each carries the functional unit, boundary, and methodology alongside the figure itself, in a form which a system can read rather than a human having to dig for it. A procurement analyst, a supplier database, or another company's own assessment tool can check that two numbers were built to matching rules before treating them as comparable. A bare number or a PDF can't support that check, no matter how rigorous the underlying study was. The context needed to verify the rules is gone by the time the figure arrives at its destination, which means every recipient downstream is trusting the number on faith rather than confirming it. ## What Carbon Data Is Still Missing Carbon numbers don't carry the intuitive trust that price does, and the gap isn't about rigor. Price earned that trust over centuries, through shared currencies, standardized receipts, and accounting rules built specifically so a number could move between parties and still mean the same thing on arrival. Environmental data has neither piece of that infrastructure yet: no consistent methodological alignment across categories, and no standardized way to disclose a result once it's calculated. Both gaps are solvable. Neither has been solved yet, which is why swings of this size keep showing up under a different product name. The fix isn't more audits stacked on top of the ones already in place. Think about a beer's alcohol percentage, no third party re-verifies every bottle at the point of sale. It is trusted because of a measurement and disclosure system behind the label doing that work permanently, at the source. Carbon data needs an equivalent move: trust engineered into the format itself, not bolted on afterward through repeated certification of the same underlying number. ## Fixing Both, Not One Fixing only one half doesn't solve the problem. It moves the failure downstream. A category with a solid PCR and no structured disclosure format still ships numbers that look incomparable, because nobody receiving the data can check that the rules behind it were followed. A structured format with no PCR behind it just moves the disagreement into a common container. The numbers become easy to compare and are still built on different assumptions, except now the mismatch is invisible instead of obvious. Closing this gap from both sides means a few concrete shifts: - Treating LCA figures as scenario-based results rather than absolute measurements. - Developing PCRs for the product categories that carry the most weight in a portfolio. - Demanding supplier data in structured exchange formats instead of PDFs or bare numbers. - Building the internal capability to preserve methodological context as data changes hands, rather than letting it evaporate at each handoff. - Training the people who are making purchasing and reporting decisions to ask about, functional unit and system boundary, before they ask about the number itself. Comparability fails without shared rules. Trust fails without a shared format to carry them. Fix one and the other failure is just waiting downstream. --- ## A Price and a Playbook: What EU's Latest CBAM Related Moves Mean URL: https://verdatir.com/insights/cbam-2026-price-and-playbook Markdown: https://verdatir.com/insights/cbam-2026-price-and-playbook.md Author: Verdatir Research · Published: 2026-07-24 · Updated: 2026-08-17 Category: Research · Tags: CBAM, EU ETS, Carbon Pricing, Regulation, Compliance > CBAM's definitive phase is live, the certificate price is set, and two open negotiations in Brussels will decide what importers actually pay. A practical read on prices, deadlines, exemptions, and scope. The Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, or CBAM, charges importers of carbon-intensive goods the same carbon price EU producers already pay under the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS). It covers six sectors: cement, iron and steel, aluminium, fertilizers, electricity, and hydrogen. Since January 1, 2026, when CBAM's definitive phase began, that price has stopped being theoretical. On July 6, 2026, the European Commission set the CBAM certificate price for the second quarter of 2026 at EUR 75.28 per tonne of embedded CO2, the volume-weighted average of EU ETS auction prices for April through June. That's down eight cents from the EUR 75.36 set for the first quarter. Four such quarterly prices apply across 2026. From January 1, 2027, the Commission switches to publishing a price every Monday instead, tracking the EU ETS market in something close to real time. That date isn't the same as when certificates go on sale though. Purchases open a month later, on February 1, 2027, and cover all of 2026's imports retroactively. Nobody pays for 2026 emissions until then, which gives importers most of a year to model their exposure before a euro changes hands. ## Two systems, one compliance trail Buying a certificate and staying compliant run through two different pieces of infrastructure. The CBAM Registry is where declarants submit their annual declarations and where certificates are issued, held, surrendered, and cancelled. Payment is processed separately, through a Common Central Platform the Commission built to handle the financial side. Declarants can buy certificates in any quantity, as often as they like, throughout the year: there's no cap and no single annual purchase window to wait for. That flexibility has a limit. From 2027, declarants must hold certificates covering at least 50% of their year-to-date embedded emissions at the end of each quarter, a threshold the Commission cut from 80% to ease cash flow. Imports are tracked on the calendar year, January 1 through December 31, and every holding requirement resets on that clock. ## The deadlines that actually bind Three dates govern a certificate's life, and none of them fall within the year the certificates cover: both the surrender and repurchase happens in the subsequent year, whilst the expiry of certificates happens 2 years after. **September 30, annually:** the deadline to submit the annual declaration and surrender enough certificates to cover the full prior year's emissions. Miss it, and the penalty is EUR 100 per tonne of the shortfall. **October 31, annually:** the deadline to request repurchase of any surplus. The request can only be filed once a year, cannot be edited or withdrawn after submission, and is repaid at exactly the price the certificate was bought for. **November 1, annually:** whatever is left uncancelled and unsurrendered from certificates bought two calendar years earlier disappears, with no compensation. None of this can be worked around by trading. CBAM certificates are non-tradable and non-transferable, so the one-shot repurchase window above is the only way to unwind a surplus. ## Who's exempt Importers whose combined imports of cement, iron and steel, aluminium, and fertilizers stay at or below 50 tonnes of net mass in a calendar year are exempt from CBAM altogether: no registration, no declaration, no certificate surrender. Electricity and hydrogen carry no such exemption. ## The two fights that will set the real price CBAM's actual bite depends on two negotiations still running in Brussels, and they're not the same fight. The first is timing. CBAM is meant to replace the free EU ETS allowances domestic producers currently receive, phasing them out between 2026 and 2034 as CBAM's own cost factor climbs from 2.5% to 100%. Germany and Austria are both pushing to stretch that phase-out past 2034, which would leave domestic producers with free allowances for longer and push back the point at which CBAM's full cost lands on importers. The second is scope. CBAM currently taxes raw materials, not the finished goods made from them, and the Commission's own reading is that this leaves a downstream leak: a fridge or an engine built from steel carries no carbon charge at all today. The Commission's December 2025 proposal would add 180 downstream products to close that gap. The Council's position, adopted in June 2026, pushes that closer to 380. Parliament's environment committee voted in July for more than 400. That fight runs through the ordinary legislative process, with Parliament and Council negotiating toward a final number. It has nothing to do with the separate delegated act that governs how certificates are bought and sold, whose public consultation closed as of August 6 and now awaits adoption. The two are easy to conflate; only one of them changes what gets taxed. Both fights are still open as of August 2026. Either outcome will matter more to an importer's actual bill than any single quarterly price print. --- ## ISO 14025:2026 reflects the growing maturity of the global EPD ecosystem URL: https://verdatir.com/insights/iso-14025-2026-epd-ecosystem-maturity Markdown: https://verdatir.com/insights/iso-14025-2026-epd-ecosystem-maturity.md Author: Verdatir Research · Published: 2026-07-10 Category: Research · Tags: EPD, ISO 14025, Sustainability, Regulation, Verification > 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. # Glossary ## Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) URL: https://verdatir.com/glossary/cbam Also known as: CBAM, EU CBAM, carbon border tax > The EU regulation that puts a carbon price on the embedded emissions of certain imported goods, so that importers pay the equivalent of what EU producers pay under the EU Emissions Trading System. The Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) is established by Regulation (EU) 2023/956. Its purpose is to prevent carbon leakage: as the EU tightens its Emissions Trading System, CBAM ensures that imports of carbon-intensive goods carry an equivalent carbon cost. ## Scope CBAM initially covers cement, iron and steel, aluminium, fertilisers, electricity and hydrogen, together with certain precursors and downstream products. Importers must report the embedded emissions of covered goods and, in the definitive phase, surrender CBAM certificates whose price tracks the EU ETS allowance price. ## Timeline A transitional period with reporting-only obligations ran from October 2023 to the end of 2025. The definitive phase, with financial obligations, began on 1 January 2026. Our Insights article on the 2026 certificate price and playbook covers the current prices, deadlines and open negotiations. ## Data requirements CBAM obligations depend on installation-level emissions data from non-EU producers, calculated according to the Commission's methodology, or on default values where actual data are unavailable. That makes verified, traceable supplier emissions data a compliance asset rather than a nice-to-have. ## Where Verdatir fits Verdatir validates supplier emissions data for CBAM submissions, aligns it with the reporting methodology and keeps a regulator-ready audit trail of every value and its source. --- ## Catena-X URL: https://verdatir.com/glossary/catena-x Also known as: Catena-X data space, Catena-X PCF > The automotive industry's open data ecosystem for secure, standardised data exchange along the supply chain, including a rulebook and data model for product carbon footprints and other sustainability data. Catena-X is a collaborative data ecosystem created by the automotive industry to let manufacturers, suppliers and service providers exchange data across company boundaries while retaining sovereignty over their own data. ## Sustainability use cases Among its first use cases is the exchange of product carbon footprints along the supply chain. Catena-X defines a PCF rulebook and data model aligned with the PACT Pathfinder Framework, so that a component's footprint can travel from a tier-n supplier to the vehicle manufacturer in a consistent, machine-readable format. Further use cases cover digital product passports, traceability and circularity. ## How exchange works Participants connect through certified connectors and data-space services that enforce access policies and usage conditions. Data stays with its owner and is shared under agreed terms rather than copied into a central database. ## Why it matters beyond automotive Catena-X is one of the most developed examples of an industry data space for sustainability data, and its models influence other sectors and the design of digital product passports. ## Where Verdatir fits Verdatir's framework-alignment layer supports the Catena-X PCF data model alongside PACT, so that supplier data can be validated before it enters the data space and traced after it leaves. --- ## Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) URL: https://verdatir.com/glossary/csrd Also known as: CSRD, Directive (EU) 2022/2464, ESRS > The EU directive that requires large companies and listed SMEs to report sustainability information under the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS), applying double materiality and subject to assurance. The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), Directive (EU) 2022/2464, replaced the earlier Non-Financial Reporting Directive and substantially expanded both the number of companies that must report on sustainability and the depth of what they report. ## What it requires Companies in scope publish sustainability statements in their management report, prepared under the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS). Reporting follows the double materiality principle, covers environmental, social and governance topics, and must be assured by an accredited provider, initially at a limited assurance level. ## Scope changes The 2025 "Omnibus" simplification package narrowed the scope of CSRD to fewer, larger companies and adjusted timelines and assurance requirements. Companies that remain in scope face the same depth of reporting as before. ## Why product data matters ESRS climate disclosures require Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions. Scope 3 depends on supplier and product-level data such as PCFs and EPDs, which is where the volume, and the review burden, sits. Our article on AI reviewing sustainability data examines how that review can remain accountable. ## Where Verdatir fits Verdatir supplies the verified, traceable product and supplier data that feeds CSRD disclosures, with an audit trail that assurance providers can follow. --- ## Critical review URL: https://verdatir.com/glossary/critical-review Also known as: ISO 14044 critical review, LCA critical review, panel review > The independent review process defined in ISO 14044 that checks whether an LCA study is consistent with the standard's methodology, data, interpretation and reporting requirements; a panel review is required for comparative assertions disclosed to the public. A critical review is the quality-assurance mechanism built into life cycle assessment. Its purpose is to ensure that the methods used are consistent with ISO 14044, scientifically and technically valid, that the data are appropriate and reasonable in relation to the goal, that interpretations reflect the limitations identified, and that the report is transparent and consistent. ## Types of review ISO 14044 distinguishes between a review by an internal or external expert and a review by a panel of interested parties. When an LCA supports a comparative assertion intended to be disclosed to the public, a panel review is required, with a chair who is an independent external expert. ## Relationship to EPD verification EPD verification and LCA critical review overlap but are not identical. Verification checks a declaration against a PCR under a programme; a critical review checks a study against ISO 14044 itself. Some programmes accept a critical review as part of verification evidence. ## Where Verdatir fits Verdatir structures the evidence a reviewer needs, checks completeness against ISO 14044 requirements and records reviewer reasoning, so that a critical review is documented as rigorously as the study it examines. --- ## Data quality rating (DQR) URL: https://verdatir.com/glossary/data-quality-rating Also known as: DQR, data quality assessment, pedigree matrix > A structured assessment of how well the data in an LCA or carbon footprint represent the process being modelled, scored on criteria such as technological, geographical and time representativeness, precision and completeness. Data quality rating turns a vague sense that "this dataset is not ideal" into a documented score that reviewers and users can interpret. ## Criteria ISO 14044 requires that data quality be described in terms of time-related, geographical and technological coverage, precision, completeness, representativeness, consistency, reproducibility and the sources of the data. The PEF method formalises this into a Data Quality Rating with scores for technological, geographical and time representativeness and precision, aggregated into an overall rating. ## Pedigree matrix Life cycle inventory databases such as ecoinvent use a pedigree matrix that scores reliability, completeness and the three types of representativeness, and translate the scores into uncertainty estimates. ## Why it matters A footprint built on outdated or geographically mismatched data may be numerically precise and still misleading. Data quality scores help users decide how much weight a result can bear, and PCRs and PEFCRs increasingly set minimum quality thresholds. ## Where Verdatir fits Verdatir captures data quality attributes for every input, checks them against the thresholds in the applicable rules, and surfaces low-quality inputs to reviewers before they propagate into a published result. --- ## Digital Product Passport (DPP) URL: https://verdatir.com/glossary/digital-product-passport Also known as: DPP, product passport, battery passport > A machine-readable record, introduced by the EU Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation, that carries product information such as composition, environmental footprint, repairability and provenance across the value chain. A Digital Product Passport (DPP) is a structured, digitally accessible set of data about a specific product, linked to it through a data carrier such as a QR code. It is one of the central instruments of the EU Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR), Regulation (EU) 2024/1781. ## What it contains The exact content is defined per product group in delegated acts, but passports are expected to carry information on materials and substances of concern, environmental footprint indicators, durability and repairability, recycled content, and instructions for use and end of life. Much of that information is derived from life cycle assessment and product carbon footprint data. ## First product groups Batteries lead the way: the EU Battery Regulation requires a battery passport for certain industrial and electric-vehicle batteries from 2027, including carbon footprint information. Textiles, iron and steel and other product groups are expected to follow under ESPR work plans. ## Why verified data matters A passport is only as trustworthy as the data behind it. Regulators, customers and recyclers will read DPPs by machine, so the environmental values they contain need traceable provenance and consistent methodology. ## Where Verdatir fits Verdatir prepares and verifies the environmental data that feeds DPPs, aligned with PEF and product-specific rules, with lineage that survives machine-to-machine exchange. --- ## Double materiality URL: https://verdatir.com/glossary/double-materiality Also known as: impact materiality, financial materiality > The reporting principle, central to the CSRD and ESRS, that a sustainability topic is material if it matters from an impact perspective (the company's effect on people and environment) or a financial perspective (its effect on the company), or both. Double materiality is the lens through which companies reporting under the CSRD decide what to disclose. It combines two perspectives that earlier frameworks treated separately. ## Impact materiality A topic is material from an impact perspective when the company's own operations or value chain have, or could have, significant positive or negative effects on people or the environment, over the short, medium or long term. ## Financial materiality A topic is material from a financial perspective when it creates risks or opportunities that affect, or could reasonably be expected to affect, the company's cash flows, development, performance, position, cost of capital or access to finance. ## In practice The double materiality assessment determines which ESRS disclosure requirements apply. It relies on evidence from across the value chain, including product-level environmental data, and it is itself subject to assurance. ## Where Verdatir fits Reliable impact materiality judgments depend on reliable environmental data. Verdatir's verified product and supplier data gives the assessment a defensible evidence base. --- ## Emission factor URL: https://verdatir.com/glossary/emission-factor Also known as: EF, characterisation factor, GHG emission factor > A coefficient that converts a quantity of activity, such as a kilowatt-hour of electricity or a kilogram of steel, into an estimated quantity of greenhouse gas emissions or other environmental impact. Emission factors are the multipliers at the heart of every carbon footprint and life cycle inventory. Activity data, such as tonnes of material purchased or litres of fuel burned, are multiplied by an emission factor to estimate emissions. ## Sources Emission factors come from life cycle inventory databases such as ecoinvent, from national inventories and government publications, from industry associations, and increasingly from suppliers themselves in the form of supplier-specific product carbon footprints. Each source carries its own boundary, geography, technology mix and reference year. ## Why they need checking An emission factor is only valid for the activity, region and period it describes. Applying a European grid factor to a factory in Southeast Asia, or a 2015 factor to 2026 production, changes the result materially. In large reports, factor selection errors are common, quiet and hard to find by sampling. ## Characterisation factors In a full LCA, characterisation factors perform a similar role at the impact assessment stage, converting inventory flows into impact category indicators such as kg CO2e or kg SO2e. ## Where Verdatir fits Verdatir cross-checks the emission factors in a submission against their stated source, region and vintage, and flags factors that do not match the activity they are applied to. --- ## EN 15804 URL: https://verdatir.com/glossary/en-15804 Also known as: EN 15804+A2, EN 15804:2012+A2:2019, EN 15804 A2 > The European standard that provides the core Product Category Rules for Environmental Product Declarations of construction products and services, aligning them with ISO 14025 and the EU Product Environmental Footprint impact categories. EN 15804, titled "Sustainability of construction works — Environmental product declarations — Core rules for the product category of construction products", is the standard that every construction product EPD in Europe is built on. It was developed by CEN Technical Committee 350. ## The A2 amendment The current version is EN 15804:2012+A2:2019. Amendment A2 aligned the standard with the European Commission's Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) method: it expanded the set of impact indicators, introduced new characterisation methods, made the reporting of biogenic carbon explicit and changed which life-cycle modules must be declared. EPDs published under the earlier A1 version are not directly comparable with A2 EPDs. ## Modules EN 15804 divides the life cycle into modules: A1 to A3 (product stage), A4 and A5 (construction), B1 to B7 (use), C1 to C4 (end of life) and D (benefits and loads beyond the system boundary). Under A2 the default scope requires the product stage, the end-of-life modules and module D, with limited exceptions. ## Relationship to other standards EN 15804 implements ISO 14025 for construction products and is closely aligned with ISO 21930, its international counterpart. National and programme-specific sub-PCRs sit on top of it. ## Where Verdatir fits Verdatir's EPD rule set covers the EN 15804+A2 requirements clause by clause, including module coverage, indicator sets and biogenic carbon reporting, and highlights where a declaration follows the A1 rather than the A2 rules. --- ## Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) URL: https://verdatir.com/glossary/environmental-product-declaration Also known as: EPD, Type III environmental declaration > A standardised, independently verified document that reports the life-cycle environmental impacts of a product, produced according to ISO 14025 and the relevant Product Category Rules. An Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) is a Type III environmental declaration as defined in ISO 14025. It presents quantified environmental information about a product across its life cycle, derived from a life cycle assessment (LCA) that follows a Product Category Rule (PCR) for that product group. ## What an EPD contains An EPD reports impact indicators (for example global warming potential, acidification, eutrophication and resource use) per declared or functional unit, broken down by life-cycle stage. It also documents the system boundary, the data sources and the assumptions behind the numbers. Construction product EPDs in Europe follow EN 15804 as their core PCR; internationally, ISO 21930 plays the same role. ## Why EPDs matter EPDs are the common currency of product-level environmental data in construction, and increasingly in other sectors. Green building schemes, public procurement rules and corporate reporting all draw on them. An EPD does not by itself say that a product is "good"; it makes the product's impacts transparent so that they can be compared, within the limits set by the PCR. ## Verification and registration Before publication an EPD is independently verified against the PCR and the underlying standards, then registered and published by a programme operator. EPDs carry a validity period, commonly five years, after which they must be updated. ## Where Verdatir fits Verdatir's review engine checks EPD documents and their underlying data against EN 15804+A2, ISO 14025, ISO 21930 and the applicable PCR clause by clause, flags gaps for a qualified reviewer, and records every decision in an audit trail that programme operators and verifiers can rely on. --- ## Functional unit and declared unit URL: https://verdatir.com/glossary/functional-unit Also known as: functional unit, declared unit, reference flow > The quantified reference to which all inputs, outputs and impacts in an LCA are related: a functional unit describes the function delivered, while a declared unit describes a quantity of product when the function is not yet known. Every LCA result is a ratio: impacts per something. The functional unit defines that something in terms of the function the product provides, so that alternatives can be compared on what they do rather than on what they weigh. ## Functional unit ISO 14040 defines the functional unit as the quantified performance of a product system for use as a reference unit. For insulation, a functional unit might be one square metre providing a stated thermal resistance over a stated service life. The reference flow is the amount of product needed to deliver that function. ## Declared unit When the function of a product depends on how it is used in a building or assembly, EN 15804 allows a declared unit instead, for example one kilogram or one cubic metre of material. Most cradle-to-gate EPDs use a declared unit; the function is defined later, at building level. ## Why it matters Comparing results calculated on different units, or on the same unit with different service lives, is meaningless. Unit definitions are one of the most common sources of misinterpretation of EPD and PCF data. ## Where Verdatir fits Verdatir checks that the unit is defined as the PCR requires and that all results, conversions and comparisons in a declaration refer to it consistently. --- ## GHG Protocol Product Standard URL: https://verdatir.com/glossary/ghg-protocol-product-standard Also known as: Product Life Cycle Accounting and Reporting Standard, GHG Protocol Product Life Cycle Standard > The Greenhouse Gas Protocol standard for quantifying and publicly reporting the life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions of a product, published by WRI and WBCSD. The GHG Protocol Product Life Cycle Accounting and Reporting Standard, usually called the Product Standard, was published by the World Resources Institute and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. It provides requirements and guidance for companies quantifying and reporting the greenhouse gas inventory of an individual product. ## What it requires The standard follows the life cycle assessment framework: define the unit of analysis and reference flow, set the boundary, collect data, allocate emissions between co-products, assess uncertainty and report. It requires that biogenic and fossil emissions be reported separately and that the boundary, data sources and assumptions be disclosed. ## Relationship to corporate accounting The Product Standard complements the GHG Protocol Corporate Standard and the Scope 3 Standard. A supplier's product footprint becomes an input to the customer's Scope 3 category 1 (purchased goods and services) inventory, which is why consistent product-level accounting matters for corporate reporting. ## Relationship to ISO 14067 The Product Standard and ISO 14067 are broadly compatible; frameworks such as PACT are designed to conform to both. ## Where Verdatir fits Verdatir's PCF rule set covers the Product Standard's requirements alongside ISO 14067, so a single review can evidence conformance with both. --- ## ISO 14025 URL: https://verdatir.com/glossary/iso-14025 Also known as: ISO 14025:2006, ISO 14025:2026, Type III environmental declarations standard > The international standard that sets the principles and procedures for Type III environmental declarations, including the use of Product Category Rules, independent verification and programme operation. ISO 14025 governs Type III environmental declarations, the family that EPDs belong to. It sits alongside ISO 14024 (Type I ecolabels awarded by a third party) and ISO 14021 (Type II self-declared claims). ## What the standard requires ISO 14025 requires that a declaration be based on a life cycle assessment conducted in accordance with ISO 14040 and ISO 14044, that it follow a Product Category Rule developed through an open consultation, that it be independently verified, and that it be published under a programme run by a programme operator with published general programme instructions. For business-to-consumer communication, verification must be carried out by an independent third party. ## The 2026 revision The standard was originally published in 2006. A revised edition was published in 2026 that updates terminology, tightens the boundary against unverified claims, strengthens harmonisation requirements, recognises verified digital EPD tools, formalises prospective EPDs and details governance and verification requirements. Our analysis of the revision is available in Insights. ## Where Verdatir fits Verdatir maps its EPD review rules to the ISO 14025 requirements so that programme operators and verifiers can evidence that a declaration meets both the standard and its PCR. --- ## ISO 14040 and ISO 14044 URL: https://verdatir.com/glossary/iso-14040-14044 Also known as: ISO 14040, ISO 14044, ISO 14040/44 > The pair of international standards that define the principles, framework, requirements and guidelines for life cycle assessment, including the four phases of an LCA and the rules for critical review. ISO 14040 and ISO 14044 are the foundation of product environmental assessment. ISO 14040 sets out the principles and framework of life cycle assessment; ISO 14044 provides the detailed requirements and guidelines that a study must meet to claim conformance. ## What they cover Together the standards define the four phases of an LCA (goal and scope, inventory analysis, impact assessment and interpretation), the concept of the functional unit, the rules for setting a system boundary and cut-off criteria, the allocation procedure for multi-output processes, data quality requirements, and the reporting and critical review requirements. ## Comparative assertions ISO 14044 sets stricter requirements when an LCA is used for a comparative assertion disclosed to the public, including a critical review by a panel of interested parties. This is one reason why EPDs, which are not meant for direct comparison without a common PCR, carry explicit limitations. ## Amendments Both standards have been amended since 2006 to clarify requirements without changing the framework; the four-phase structure remains. ## Where Verdatir fits Every review on the Verdatir platform is anchored to ISO 14040/44 concepts, so that whichever declaration standard applies on top, the underlying LCA logic is checked consistently. --- ## ISO 14067 URL: https://verdatir.com/glossary/iso-14067 Also known as: ISO 14067:2018, carbon footprint of products standard > The international standard specifying principles, requirements and guidelines for quantifying the carbon footprint of a product, based on ISO 14040 and ISO 14044 and limited to the impact category of climate change. ISO 14067 is the reference standard for calculating a Product Carbon Footprint. It applies the life cycle assessment framework of ISO 14040 and ISO 14044 to a single impact category, climate change, and adds requirements specific to greenhouse gas accounting. ## Key requirements The standard requires a defined functional or declared unit, a system boundary that covers the life-cycle stages in scope, documented treatment of biogenic carbon and land-use change, and separate reporting of removals and emissions. It also requires that fossil and biogenic GHG emissions be reported separately. ## Partial footprints ISO 14067 allows a partial carbon footprint, for example cradle-to-gate, provided that the scope is clearly stated. This is the basis for most supplier-to-customer PCF exchange. ## Relationship to the GHG Protocol The GHG Protocol Product Standard and ISO 14067 are broadly consistent. Industry frameworks such as PACT reference both, and many companies calculate a footprint that complies with both at once. ## Where Verdatir fits Verdatir reviews PCF studies for ISO 14067 conformance, checking unit definitions, boundary completeness, biogenic carbon treatment and the provenance of every emission factor. --- ## ISO 21930 URL: https://verdatir.com/glossary/iso-21930 Also known as: ISO 21930:2017 > The international standard providing core rules for Environmental Product Declarations of construction products and services, serving as the global counterpart to EN 15804. ISO 21930 provides the core Product Category Rules for EPDs of construction products and services at the international level. Programmes outside Europe, and international manufacturers publishing in several regions, commonly declare conformance with ISO 21930 alongside or instead of EN 15804. ## Scope The standard defines the life-cycle stages and modules to be declared, the impact indicators, the treatment of biogenic carbon and the content of the declaration. It is built on ISO 14025 and ISO 14040/44 and was revised in 2017 to align more closely with EN 15804. ## EN 15804 and ISO 21930 The two standards are closely harmonised but not identical: indicator sets, module requirements and some calculation rules differ in detail. An EPD that is valid under one is not automatically compliant with the other, and cross-recognition depends on the programme operator. ## Where Verdatir fits Verdatir maintains both rule sets so that a manufacturer publishing internationally can see exactly where a declaration meets ISO 21930, where it meets EN 15804+A2, and where the two diverge. --- ## Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) URL: https://verdatir.com/glossary/life-cycle-assessment Also known as: LCA, life cycle analysis > A systematic method, standardised in ISO 14040 and ISO 14044, for quantifying the environmental impacts of a product or service across its entire life cycle, from raw material extraction to end of life. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is the method underneath almost every product-level environmental claim, including EPDs and product carbon footprints. It compiles the inputs and outputs of a product system and evaluates their potential environmental impacts over the life cycle. ## The four phases ISO 14040 and ISO 14044 structure an LCA in four iterative phases: 1. **Goal and scope definition**: the purpose of the study, the functional unit, the system boundary, allocation rules and data requirements. 2. **Life cycle inventory (LCI)**: collection and quantification of all relevant flows of energy, materials and emissions. 3. **Life cycle impact assessment (LCIA)**: translation of inventory flows into impact categories such as climate change, acidification or water use, using characterisation factors. 4. **Interpretation**: identification of significant issues, sensitivity and uncertainty checks, and conclusions consistent with the goal. ## Foreground and background data The practitioner collects primary data for the processes the organisation controls and uses background databases for upstream processes such as electricity generation or raw material production. The choice of background data is one of the largest drivers of differences between studies. ## Why verified LCAs still differ Two LCAs of similar products can be individually correct yet not comparable if they use different boundaries, allocation methods or datasets. Product Category Rules exist to close that gap for declarations. Our article on why verified LCAs still aren't comparable explores this in depth. ## Where Verdatir fits Verdatir checks LCA studies and reports for completeness and consistency against ISO 14040/44 and the relevant PCR, so reviewers spend their time on judgment rather than on hunting for missing clauses. --- ## PACT Pathfinder Framework URL: https://verdatir.com/glossary/pact-pathfinder-framework Also known as: PACT, Partnership for Carbon Transparency, Pathfinder Framework, PACT Technical Specifications > A WBCSD-led initiative that defines a common methodology (the Pathfinder Framework) and technical specifications for calculating and exchanging cradle-to-gate product carbon footprints between companies. The Partnership for Carbon Transparency (PACT), hosted by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, addresses a practical problem: companies need product carbon footprints from their suppliers, but every supplier calculates and shares them differently. ## The methodology The Pathfinder Framework is a methodology for calculating cradle-to-gate PCFs in a way that conforms with ISO 14067 and the GHG Protocol Product Standard while narrowing the choices those standards leave open. It specifies boundary, allocation, data quality and reporting rules so that footprints from different suppliers can be aggregated. ## The data exchange The PACT Technical Specifications define a data model and API so that PCFs can be exchanged machine to machine between conformant software solutions. Industry data spaces such as Catena-X build on the PACT data model. ## Why it matters Scope 3 inventories are only as good as the supplier data in them. A shared methodology and exchange format make supplier-specific data usable at scale instead of falling back to industry averages. ## Where Verdatir fits Verdatir validates PACT-conformant PCFs, checks their methodology fields and emission factors, and preserves lineage so that exchanged footprints remain auditable after they leave the supplier. --- ## Primary and secondary data URL: https://verdatir.com/glossary/primary-and-secondary-data Also known as: primary data, secondary data, supplier-specific data, background data, foreground data > In life cycle assessment and carbon accounting, primary data are measured or collected directly from the processes in the product's own supply chain, while secondary data come from databases, literature or industry averages. The distinction between primary and secondary data explains much of the difference in quality between two environmental studies of similar products. ## Primary data Primary data are site-specific measurements or records from the processes under the reporting organisation's control or from its direct suppliers: metered energy use, weighed inputs and outputs, supplier-specific product carbon footprints. They are more representative but more costly to collect and maintain. ## Secondary data Secondary data are taken from life cycle inventory databases, published studies, government statistics or industry averages. They fill the gaps that primary data cannot cover, especially for upstream processes many tiers away, but they are averages and may not reflect the actual technology, region or period. ## Foreground and background Practitioners often describe the processes modelled with primary data as the foreground system and the database-driven remainder as the background system. Standards and PCRs specify minimum shares of primary data for certain processes. ## Where Verdatir fits Verdatir records the data source and type behind every value, checks that primary-data requirements in the PCR or framework are met, and makes the primary/secondary split visible to reviewers and customers. --- ## Product Carbon Footprint (PCF) URL: https://verdatir.com/glossary/product-carbon-footprint Also known as: PCF, carbon footprint of a product, CFP > The total greenhouse gas emissions attributable to a product over all or part of its life cycle, expressed in kilograms of CO2 equivalent per unit of product. A Product Carbon Footprint (PCF) quantifies the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and removals associated with a product, following life cycle assessment principles but restricted to the single impact category of climate change. It is expressed in kilograms of CO2 equivalent (kg CO2e) per declared or functional unit. ## Standards The two reference standards are ISO 14067, which builds on ISO 14040 and ISO 14044, and the GHG Protocol Product Life Cycle Accounting and Reporting Standard. Both require a clearly defined system boundary, a functional or declared unit, documented data sources and treatment of biogenic carbon. ## Cradle-to-gate versus cradle-to-grave Many PCFs exchanged between companies are cradle-to-gate: they cover raw material extraction, transport and manufacturing up to the factory gate, so that a customer can add the number into its own inventory. Cradle-to-grave footprints add distribution, use and end of life. ## Exchange and comparability Because supply chains need PCFs from thousands of suppliers, industry initiatives such as the PACT Pathfinder Framework and Catena-X define how PCFs are calculated and exchanged in a consistent, machine-readable format. Even so, two PCFs are only comparable when they share the same boundary, allocation choices and background data. ## Where Verdatir fits Verdatir validates PCF submissions against ISO 14067, the GHG Protocol and the PACT methodology, cross-checks emission factors against their sources, and preserves lineage so that a customer's Scope 3 inventory can trace every number back to its origin. --- ## Product Category Rules (PCR) URL: https://verdatir.com/glossary/product-category-rules Also known as: PCR, PCRs, product category rule > A set of specific rules, requirements and guidelines for developing Type III environmental declarations for one or more product categories, so that EPDs within a category are calculated and presented consistently. Product Category Rules (PCR) are the rulebook that makes an EPD reproducible. ISO 14025 defines them as the set of specific rules, requirements and guidelines for developing Type III environmental declarations for one or more product categories. ## What a PCR fixes A PCR specifies the functional or declared unit, the system boundary and life-cycle stages to include, the allocation rules for co-products and recycling, the impact categories and characterisation methods, the data quality requirements, the cut-off criteria and the content and layout of the declaration. By fixing these choices, a PCR turns a general method (LCA) into a repeatable procedure for a product group. ## Who writes them PCRs are developed by programme operators through an open consultation with interested parties, including manufacturers, LCA practitioners and verifiers. In construction, EN 15804 acts as the core PCR for Europe, and sub-PCRs (often called c-PCRs) add product-specific rules for, say, insulation or concrete. ## Why they matter for comparability Third-party verification confirms that an EPD followed its PCR. Comparability between two EPDs requires that they followed the same PCR, with the same version, unit and boundary. Verification and comparability are therefore two separate questions. ## Where Verdatir fits Verdatir encodes PCR requirements as rule sets so that clauses are checked systematically rather than sampled, and so that partial compliance with a clause is flagged for a reviewer instead of slipping through. --- ## Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) URL: https://verdatir.com/glossary/product-environmental-footprint Also known as: PEF, OEF, Organisation Environmental Footprint, PEFCR, Environmental Footprint method > The European Commission's harmonised life-cycle method for measuring the environmental performance of products (PEF) and organisations (OEF), using sixteen impact categories and product-specific rules called PEFCRs. The Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) and Organisation Environmental Footprint (OEF) are the European Commission's methods for calculating the life-cycle environmental performance of products and organisations in a harmonised way. They were developed to reduce the proliferation of incompatible methods and labels across the EU market. ## Method PEF prescribes sixteen impact categories with specified characterisation models, detailed rules on system boundaries, allocation and end of life (the Circular Footprint Formula), and a data quality rating scheme. Product Environmental Footprint Category Rules (PEFCRs) apply the method to specific product groups, such as batteries, dairy or apparel, in the same way that PCRs apply ISO 14025. ## Status The method is set out in Commission Recommendation (EU) 2021/2279. It underpins several EU policy instruments and is referenced by EN 15804+A2, which adopted the PEF impact categories for construction EPDs. ## PEF and EPDs PEF and EPD systems share the LCA foundation but differ in impact methods, data requirements and reporting formats. Organisations that operate in both worlds need to map one to the other, which is a recurring source of inconsistency. ## Where Verdatir fits Verdatir's framework-alignment layer maps a single dataset to PEF, EN 15804 and ISO requirements, so that the same underlying study can be checked and reported under each without re-modelling. --- ## Programme operator URL: https://verdatir.com/glossary/programme-operator Also known as: EPD programme operator, program operator, EPD program > The organisation that runs an EPD programme under ISO 14025: it publishes the general programme instructions, develops and maintains Product Category Rules, manages verification and registers and publishes EPDs. A programme operator is the institutional backbone of an EPD system. ISO 14025 defines it as the body that conducts a Type III environmental declaration programme, and it is the entity that gives an EPD its formal standing. ## Responsibilities Programme operators publish general programme instructions, develop PCRs through open consultation, maintain lists of approved verifiers, review or oversee the verification of each EPD, register and publish declarations, and manage the validity period and any updates. Examples include The International EPD System (EPD International), IBU in Germany and EPD Norge in Norway. ## The scaling challenge The number of EPDs has grown rapidly, driven by procurement rules, green building schemes and regulation. Programme operators must keep verification consistent across many verifiers and many PCRs while reviewer capacity is limited. Our article on verification infrastructure argues that this infrastructure is the real product of any programme. ## Where Verdatir fits Verdatir gives programme operators a structured verification workflow: consistent rule application across verifiers, evidence-bound sign-off and an audit trail that supports mutual recognition and regulatory scrutiny. --- ## Scope 3 emissions URL: https://verdatir.com/glossary/scope-3 Also known as: scope 3, value chain emissions, indirect emissions > All indirect greenhouse gas emissions that occur in a company's value chain, upstream and downstream, other than the purchased energy counted in Scope 2, as defined by the GHG Protocol Corporate Standard. The GHG Protocol divides a company's emissions into three scopes. Scope 1 covers direct emissions from owned or controlled sources, Scope 2 covers purchased electricity, heat and steam, and Scope 3 covers everything else in the value chain. ## The fifteen categories The Scope 3 Standard defines fifteen categories, eight upstream (including purchased goods and services, capital goods, fuel- and energy-related activities, transport and business travel) and seven downstream (including use of sold products, end-of-life treatment and investments). For most manufacturers, purchased goods and services is the largest category. ## Why product data matters Category 1 emissions are calculated from what a company buys. Spend-based or average-data methods are quick but blunt; supplier-specific product carbon footprints are more accurate but require consistent methodology and data exchange, which is what PACT and Catena-X provide. ## Reporting pressure CSRD, investor frameworks and customer requirements increasingly require Scope 3 disclosure with assurance, which pushes data quality requirements down the supply chain. ## Where Verdatir fits Verdatir verifies the supplier and product footprints that feed Scope 3 inventories and keeps their lineage intact, so that an assured corporate number can be traced back to verified product-level data. --- ## System boundary URL: https://verdatir.com/glossary/system-boundary Also known as: life cycle stages, modules A1-A3, cradle-to-gate, cradle-to-grave > The set of processes included in a life cycle assessment or carbon footprint, defined by which life-cycle stages, activities and flows are inside the study and which are excluded. The system boundary determines what an environmental result actually covers. Two studies of the same product with different boundaries will produce different numbers, and both can be correct. ## Common boundaries Cradle-to-gate covers raw material extraction, transport and manufacturing up to the point where the product leaves the factory. Cradle-to-grave adds distribution, installation, use, maintenance and end of life. Gate-to-gate covers a single process step. Cradle-to-cradle extends to reuse and recycling benefits. ## Modules in EN 15804 Construction EPDs express the boundary as modules: A1 to A3 (product stage), A4 and A5 (construction process), B1 to B7 (use stage), C1 to C4 (end of life) and D (benefits and loads beyond the system boundary). The PCR sets which modules are mandatory. ## Cut-off criteria Standards allow small flows to be excluded under stated cut-off rules, typically expressed as a share of mass, energy or environmental significance. Cut-off decisions must be documented because they affect completeness. ## Where Verdatir fits Verdatir checks that the declared boundary matches the PCR, that mandatory modules are present, that exclusions are justified, and that a boundary assumption stated at the start is applied consistently through the whole study. --- ## Third-party verification URL: https://verdatir.com/glossary/third-party-verification Also known as: independent verification, EPD verification, external verification > The independent check, required by ISO 14025 for EPDs, that a declaration and its underlying LCA conform to the applicable standards and Product Category Rules, performed by a verifier independent of the declaring organisation. Third-party verification is the step that turns an LCA study into a declaration that others can rely on. A verifier, approved by the programme operator and independent of the manufacturer and the LCA practitioner, checks the declaration against the standard and the PCR. ## What is verified The verifier confirms that the LCA was performed according to ISO 14040/44 and the PCR, that the data are plausible, representative and complete, that calculations and impact methods are correct, and that the declaration presents the results and their limitations as required. The verifier signs off, and the programme operator registers the EPD. ## What verification does not do Verification confirms that a study followed its own rules. It does not by itself establish that two studies are comparable, nor does it certify that a product is environmentally preferable. Those depend on shared PCRs and appropriate use of the results. ## The capacity problem Verification is manual, expert work, and the number of qualified verifiers has not kept pace with the volume of declarations. Sampling and fatigue are the predictable consequences. ## Where Verdatir fits Verdatir runs the applicable checks before a verifier opens the file, flags the items that need judgment, and records the verifier's decisions with reasoning, so verification becomes faster without becoming shallower.