The first database of ecological impacts of construction materials was created at ČVUT

Prague - The first database with information about the ecological impacts of domestic construction products has been created in the Czech Republic. The database named Envimat was developed by the Faculty of Civil Engineering at the Czech Technical University in Prague.
     "Today we can easily calculate the operational energy consumption of a building, but in order to assess the overall impacts of the building on the environment, we also need to calculate its embodied energy, meaning the energy consumed in the production of the construction materials and technologies used," said Petr Hájek, head of the Department of Ground Structures at CTU.
     The Envimat database aims to gather standardized and verified data on the ecological impacts of building materials and structures in an internationally recognized format EPD (Environmental Product Declaration). The first company to input the profiles of its products into Envimat is the insulation material producer Knauf Insulation.