According to the MEP 2040 initiative, a coalition of engineers committed to decarbonizing building systems by 2040, MEP systems can contribute over 50% of the embodied carbon in a building. In the Beginners Guide to Embodied Carbon, a case study on campus building Wymer Hall at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champagne showed that MEP components outpaced structural and enclosure materials in total embodied emissions by a wide margin, even without the extreme system loads of a data center. For more MEP-intensive buildings like hyperscale facilities, the figure could be significantly higher.
Yet, most MEP manufacturers still aren’t providing the environmental product declarations (EPDs) required to model and reduce these impacts. EPDs are documents providing verified and transparent information on a product’s environmental performance over its life cycle. They serve developers and AEC professionals in search of lower-carbon materials from an early design stage of a project.
The pressure is coming not just from engineers and consultants, but from tech companies themselves.
Meta, Google, Amazon, and other cloud leaders are investing tens of billions of dollars in data center construction. A recent image posted by Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg overlaid a single data center footprint across Manhattan, underscoring the scale of the builds underway.
And this is only the beginning. New data center developments are underway in nearly every U.S. region, with entire megawatt-scale campuses in the pipeline. As operational efficiency improves, embodied carbon becomes the next major frontier, and buyers are moving fast to address it.
Procurement teams are now actively screening out vendors who cannot provide third-party-verified carbon data.
National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) map shows data center infrastructure in the US in 2025
Without published EPDs, MEP products may no longer qualify for specification in many large-scale infrastructure projects. Engineers working on designs aligned with MEP 2040 or net-zero targets are facing a data vacuum when it comes to HVAC systems, chillers, piping, cabling, lighting, and other MEP components.
This has a direct commercial impact. Suppliers without EPDs risk being locked out of high-value projects — not for performance, but for lack of carbon transparency.
You don’t need to build ultra low-carbon products to win work. But you do need to show the accurate and verified data that buyers now expect. Without that data, your products don’t get specified even if they meet every other technical or commercial requirement.
While structure and envelope suppliers have spent the past five years responding to carbon transparency requirements, most MEP firms haven’t started. In the meantime, these projects are being designed and specified — leaving manufacturers without carbon data out of the running entirely.
One Click LCA has built a purpose-built solution for MEP manufacturers looking to meet these procurement demands without slowing down production or design workflows — the EPD Generator.
Key capabilities include:
As data center construction accelerates, so too does the shift toward embodied carbon accountability. For MEP professionals , whether in engineering firms or manufacturing companies, the window to act is now.
Will not having an EPD cost me projects?
Very likely. If your product can’t be assessed for embodied carbon, it often doesn’t get modeled, which means it doesn’t get specified. Buyers may never even contact you.
How fast can I publish an EPD if I need one now?
With One Click LCA, most manufacturers can publish a verified EPD in just a few weeks. The platform automates much of the data input, saving time and cost.
Do I need carbon data for every single product I sell?
Not necessarily. You can create representative EPDs that cover families of products to scale across your portfolio efficiently.
Will publishing an EPD help my business?
Publishing an EPD makes your products visible to specifiers working on major projects. It opens access to the databases and tools they rely on and gives your sales team insight into who’s reviewing your products and what they’re working on — so you can target the right opportunities.
In a rapidly shifting market, One Click LCA makes it easy to stay visible and win. One Click LCA’s EPD Generator helps you create third-party-verified carbon data faster and across multiple categories using a streamlined process that fits your existing product workflows. Once published, your data appears in the world’s largest construction LCA database, used by over 10,000 monthly specifiers. With a Manufacturer Page and EPD Usage Analytics, you also gain insight into who is viewing your products, what types of projects they’re linked to, and where new opportunities are emerging. It’s not just compliance — it’s a commercial advantage. And it’s how manufacturers are securing their place in the future of tech infrastructure.