First environmental declaration for wind turbines

With support from IVL, wind turbine manufacturer Goldwind has become the first producer to create an Environmental Product Declaration (EPD). By creating an EPD, a manufacturer can show the environmental impact of its products in a transparent and comparable way.

An EPD is a declaration in which a manufacturer reports comparable, objective and third-party verified data showing the environmental perfomance of their product and services. Close cooperation between IVL and Goldwind led to the registration and publication of EPDs for two wind turbines.These are the first EPDs for wind turbines in the Chinese market, which attracted attention in Chinese media.

- Goldwind has set an international industry benchmark for Chinese renewable energy companies by make a type ecolabel. I hope more companies will follow their example, says Xu Mun, Senior research expert at IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute.

In recent years, an increasing number of EU countries have introduced EPDs as a mandatory part of public procurement and bidding, which has led to companies exporting to the EU having to deal with new ways of reporting. The energy and construction sectors in particular have seen a sharp increase in EPDs.

- The environmental product declarations for Goldwind show that the climate impact per kilowatt hour of electricity is 7.2 and 8.0 grams of carbon dioxide equivalents, which is low compared to other wind turbines, says Xu Min.