This guide concerns the 'Interior Design Carbon tool'. This carbon reduction tool can be purchased as an add-on to any building or infrastructure license. It is customized for interior designers, architects, contractors and sustainability consultants and includes relevant interior material data. Focusing the material scope to only data relevant to interior applications simplifies the life-cycle assessment process.
The tool supports users in evaluating and reducing the embodied carbon impact of, for instance, interior fit-outs, refurbishments and tenant improvement projects. Typical use cases include comparing alternative material or design options to support decision-making, modelling the reuse of existing or newly sourced materials, and optimizing material selection. Project examples include office interiors, retail spaces and hotel environments.
Life-Cycle & Results Scope
This is a tool specifically made for Interior Design, which means it has a limited building material scope (included sections are 'Vertical Structures and Façade', 'Other Structures and Materials' & 'Building Technology.)
The life-cycle stages scope includes A1-A3, A4 and A5.
The results indicators scope includes Global Warming Potential (GWP kg CO2e), Biogenic Carbon Storage (kg CO2e bio) and Social Cost of Carbon (in desired currency format).
Data Scope
The Interior Design Carbon tool allows for EN15804+A1 (CML), EN15804+A2 (PEF) and TRACI data to be used.
Both EPDs and generic data can be found in the tool. Material data is regionally filterable and automatically includes default values for service life, transport distance, wastage, and end-of-life scenario. These can be manually adjusted.
The material database in the tool includes a broad range of construction and interior fit-out products relevant to interior projects. Examples of material types include finishes, flooring, ceiling tiles, lighting, windows, doors, and furniture systems and more.
Assessment Scope
The tool does not have a mandatory scope of materials to be included.
Set your building area
Enter the building area in the respective question form. Specify as a minimum gross internal floor area (GIFA). This will be used to provide results per one m2, in order to make a possible comparison between different projects. You can find out more about the building area here.
Enter your construction materials
Enter your construction/building materials, either manually or through import. Adjust their service life setting, transport setting, localization, wastage percentage (A5 emissions) and end-of-life process as seen fit. Materials will have a default value for these parameters which may be adjusted in the LCA parameters. Read more about that here.
You can choose to mark a material as a 'reused material' which removes A1-A3 and A5 emissions. For existing materials (e.g. re-used foundation) you can check the box “Locally reused” to remove A4 impacts (an alternative approach is to set the transportation distance to 0 to remove A4 emissions). Read more about that here.
You can set a custom classification or use private classifications if you have an Expert license.
Analysing the results
The Interior Design Carbon tool reports on
Global Warming (GWP, kg CO2e)
Biogenic Carbon Storage (kg CO2e bio)
Social cost of carbon (in desired currency format).
The table on the results page presents the above results per life cycle stage. By clicking on “Details” in the result table, you can find more information about the impacts within each lifecycle stage.
Under 'More actions' in the top-right corner, you can get a detailed results report in Excel format.
On the Results page, you can also see the most contributing materials in the project.
In the Graphs section, you can choose from multiple types of graphs and diagrams. You can also change classification, for instance if you have used private classifications.