EPD Global is an international Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) Program Operator (also written “Programme Operator” in EPD Global’s own European-spelled materials) based in Oslo, Norway, and run by the Norwegian EPD Foundation. Formerly known as EPD-Norway, it has operated a Type III EPD program under ISO 14025 since 2002, and its register now lists more than 12,000 published, product-specific EPDs spanning construction materials, industrial products, and consumer goods. This profile covers who EPD Global is, what it publishes, the standards and rules its program runs on, how its tool verification works, and its partnership with Eco Platform.
Who Is EPD Global?
EPD Global is the current name for the program historically known as EPD-Norway (Stiftelsen EPD-Norge, or the Norwegian EPD Foundation). Its original domain, epd-norge.no, now redirects to epd-global.com to reflect the rebrand — the legal entity, foundation, and underlying program haven’t changed, only the public-facing name.
Founded in 2002, EPD Global built one of the first complete national EPD programs in Europe and has since grown into one of the largest EPD Program Operators globally. Its stated commitment is to automation and digitalization “in order to provide the best and most efficient service to all parties in the value chain, from EPD owners to EPD users.”
Verification services for the program are handled through its subsidiary, Global Verify & Services AS, set up specifically to keep verification independent from the program operator itself — a structure intended to increase quality, independence, and trust in the environmental information EPD Global publishes.
What EPDs Does EPD Global Make Available?
EPD Global maintains a public, searchable register of Type III Environmental Product Declarations — often referred to as “EPDer” on its site — covering products such as:
- Concrete and other building materials
- Insulation, roofing, and building envelope products
- HVAC, mechanical, and electrical/electronic components and cables
- Furniture and other manufactured goods
Each EPD in the register documents a product’s environmental performance across its life cycle — global warming potential, energy use, water consumption, and other impact categories — calculated from a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and verified against the applicable Product Category Rule before publication.
The Standards Behind EPD Global’s Program
EPD Global’s program is built on the same core standards used across the international EPD system:
- ISO 14025 — the overarching international standard for Type III environmental declarations, which every EPD Global-published EPD must comply with.
- EN 15804+A2 — the European standard for construction product EPDs, required for products marketed in Europe. It defines 19 environmental impact categories and mandatory end-of-life reporting.
- ISO 21930 — the international standard for construction product EPDs, used alongside or instead of EN 15804 depending on the target market. (See our breakdown of ISO 21930 vs EN 15804 for how the two compare.)
On top of these, every EPD must follow a compliant Product Category Rule (PCR) — the product-specific rulebook that defines system boundaries, data requirements, and calculation methods for a given product category. EPD Global maintains its own PCR register and coordinates the transition of construction-product PCRs to EN 15804+A2 as the standard evolves.
EPD Global’s Program Operator Guidelines
Like other EPD Program Operators, EPD Global publishes a General Programme Instructions (GPI) document — its Program Operator Guidelines — that sets out the rules for running the program: how PCRs are developed and approved, how EPDs are verified and registered, how tool verification works, and how the program maintains compliance with ISO 14025.
The current version, GPI v4 (2024), is available directly from EPD Global: General Programme Instructions (PDF).
Tool Verification: How Pre-Verified EPD Tools Work
One of EPD Global’s more distinctive services is EPD tool verification — the approval of software and calculation tools that can generate LCA results or complete EPD content on a pre-verified basis. EPD Global’s site lists well over 200 approved tools, each tied to a specific product scope, an assigned third-party verifier, and a validity period that’s renewed on an ongoing basis.
A pre-verified tool works differently from a standard, one-off EPD verification: once a tool itself has passed EPD Global’s tool verification process, EPDs generated with it can go through a simplified or annual review instead of a full individual verification. That reduces the time and verifier cost involved in publishing each new EPD, which matters for manufacturers producing declarations across large product portfolios.
CarbonBright’s LCA platform is used as a pre-verified tool within the EPD Global program, which is one of the reasons our customers can move from product data to a published, verified EPD faster than with a fully manual process.
EPD Global and Eco Platform
EPD Global is a member Program Operator of Eco Platform, the European non-profit association that harmonizes how EN 15804 is implemented across national and regional EPD programs. Eco Platform audits its member programs against a shared set of verification guidelines, and lists EPD Global (referred to as “EPD-Global, powered by EPD-Norway”) as one of its largest member operators by EPD volume.
Membership in Eco Platform underpins mutual recognition between EPD Global and other Eco Platform-aligned Program Operators, including IBU (Germany) and the International EPD System (Sweden), among others. In practice, this means an EPD published through EPD Global can carry the ECO EPD mark and be recognized across those partner programs without needing a separate re-verification — extending the reach of a single verified declaration across European markets.
How CarbonBright Works With EPD Global
CarbonBright’s Life Cycle Assessment and EPD workflows are built to produce audit-ready data aligned with the standards EPD Global’s program runs on — ISO 14025, EN 15804+A2, and the applicable PCR for each product. As a pre-verified tool within the EPD Global program, CarbonBright helps manufacturers move from product and supply chain data to a published, verified EPD with less manual back-and-forth than a fully bespoke verification process.
By automating the data collection and LCA modeling that sit behind each EPD, CarbonBright is also driving down the cost of pre-verification dramatically compared to a traditional, manual verification workflow — making it practical for manufacturers to publish and maintain EPDs across much larger product portfolios.
Looking to publish an EPD through EPD Global or another Program Operator? Contact CarbonBright to see how our platform fits into that process.
