US Green Building Council, creator of LEED rating system, issued a press release to talk about teaming up with another big player:
USGBC and UL Environment Announce Exclusive Strategic Partnership on Building Materials & Products Transparency
The first initiative of the partnership is the creation of a joint Environmental Product Declaration (EPD). EPDs are a standardized way of quantifying the environmental impact of a product or system. The joint USGBC-UL EPDs are a solution to increase transparency in building materials and products that are being used in our buildings, homes, schools, hospitals and other structures.
Here's an article that summarizes some of the reasoning. Apparently this came to the ire of some other companies involved in creating Life Cycle Assessments and EPDs, maybe because they see UL as a competitor, or because they have already spent time and resources working to existing standards.
http://www.buildinggreen.com/auth/article.cfm/2013/12/2/UL-USGBC-Team-Up-to-Standardize-LCA-Rules/
From the article:
there are multiple LCA software tools, which all use the chosen data differently. This can lead to sometimes-disparate results: in a recent analysis of biomass emissions, for example, UL found a 30% difference in outputs between two different software programs. “Those inconsistencies have to be known, and they have to be fixed,” he said.
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