One Click LCA partners with Future Homes Hub to integrate whole-life carbon conventions for new homes

February 14, 2025  —  Helsinki-based end-to-end sustainability platform One Click LCA is the latest commercial provider to integrate the Future Homes Hub’s Default Materials and Carbon Data within their platform, making it easier for One Click LCA users to report to the Whole Life Carbon (WLC) Conventions for New Homes.

The Conventions aim to solve the challenge of inconsistent results from whole life carbon assessments in new homes — a challenge caused by varying defaults and assumptions selected by users.

Increasing numbers of product-specific environmental product declarations (EPDs) are being published by manufacturers, which has driven an improvement in accuracy, but in the current landscape assumptions default to the ‘as built’ stage assessment where no product-specific data is available.

To address this, working groups coordinated by the Future Homes Hub, comprised of developers, manufacturers and whole life carbon experts, have identified and published a set of generic carbon impact factors for materials and product types commonly used in new homes, which LCA assessors can use at early-design stages or where no product-specific data is available.

“WLC tool users are doing their best to pick the most appropriate generic impact factors, but differences in which factors and reference points are available in different tools — as well as varying training and experience — are likely feeding into this inconsistency we have seen historically for similar house types.

Within the new homes sphere, we need to agree to use the same set of defaults and assumptions where product-specific EPDs are not available.

The conventions provide a ‘wrapper’ in terms of input assumptions and output scope to ensure that new homes WLC assessments can be compared like-with-like.”

— Adam Graveley, Head of Technical and Innovation at Future Homes Hub

Sector-wide alignment and commitment from UK homebuilders will drive consistency in whole life carbon assessment outputs and help the sector move toward mainstream measurement and disclosure.

One Click LCA, the world-leading life-cycle assessment and EPD software provider for the construction and manufacturing industries, is supporting homebuilders to report to the Conventions by integrating the default materials table into their building LCA tool. This integration will enable users to find the Conventions’ default data easily by selecting ‘Future Homes Hub’ from the data source. This functionality is available in RICS 2^nd edition, One Click LCA global carbon tools and GLA modules.

At the later project stages, once the specific manufacturers and products to be procured are known, One Click LCA’s comprehensive database makes it easy to swap out the generic data for product-specific data from manufacturer EPDs.

On Wednesday, 26^th February, One Click LCA and the Future Homes Hub will host a webinar to provide more information on the Whole Life Carbon Conventions for New Homes and how to report the data using the One Click LCA tool.

For more information, or to register for free, please visit: Future Homes Hub UK

“I’m thrilled to see the Future Homes Hub database has been integrated to the One Click LCA platform, enabling house builders to seamlessly access their material selections by simply selecting Future Homes Hub as the data source.

This integration underscores One Click LCA’s commitment to providing house builders with streamlined tools for sustainable material choices. Our collaboration with the Future Homes Hub will empower house builders to make informed environmental decisions for future generations and look forward to continuing our work in advancing innovation within the built environment.” 

— Adrian Giles,  Senior Business Development Manager at One Click LCA

About One Click LCA

Used in 170+ countries, One Click LCA is the leading end-to-end sustainability platform for construction and manufacturing. The AI-powered software decarbonises and drives sustainability across the construction value chain with scientific, easy-to-use, automated life-cycle assessment (LCA) and environmental product declarations (EPDs) to calculate and reduce the environmental impacts of building, infrastructure, and renovation projects and products. The platform also allows assessment of circularity, life-cycle cost, and biodiversity. One Click LCA is used by blue-chip enterprises like AECOM, Arcadis, Foster+Partners, WSP, ArcelorMittal, Geberit, and Saint-Gobain, among others. It offers a unique global database with +250,000 LCA datasets; supports +80 standards and certifications, including LEED, BREEAM, GRESB and other national regulations; and seamlessly integrates with +20 of the most widely used BIM software tools, including Autodesk Revit®, Tekla Structures® and Bentley iTwin®. One Click LCA was founded in Helsinki, Finland in 2001, with a team of +200 people on all continents. Learn more at: oneclicklca.com