Project Life Cycle Assessment Requirements: ECHO Recommendations for Alignment
(October 2024)

In 2023, ECHO Project members recognized a need for alignment around a consistent approach for performing and reporting life cycle assessment results. This publication, Project Life Cycle Assessment Requirements: ECHO Recommendations for Alignment, Version 1.0, summarizes ECHO’s findings and recommendations around project LCA requirements to drive alignment in the modeling and reporting of project LCAs submitted to the commitment and certification programs included in ECHO.  These recommendations leverage a review of twenty-nine commitments, certification programs, standards, policies, and benchmarking initiatives relevant to North American project LCA requirements, also summarized in the document. 

ECHO organizations represent the full scope of the built environment – from buildings to parks to roads and beyond – and our publications, therefore, focus on project LCA, which encompasses whole building LCAs (WBLCA or wbLCA), sitework LCAs (covering both hardscape and softscape), and infrastructure LCAs of roadways, bridges, and other infrastructure projects.

As organizations both within and outside of ECHO continue to update their standards and programs, we stress the importance of collaborations like ECHO in moving towards harmonization and alignment across requirements, while allowing space for leaders to continue pushing the boundaries of project LCA and strategies for reducing embodied carbon in the built environment. The less time practitioners spend navigating different requirements, the more time they will have to dedicate to pushing for actual reductions.

For feedback, questions, or suggestions on this report, please reach out to Meghan Lewis.