New Practice for Calculating Carbon Payback Periods during Product Use
1. Scope
This practice is for energy-saving building products designed to reduce building energy consumption and operational carbon during building operations.
This practice provides the fundamental rules for evaluating the embodied carbon of a product and comparing this to its ability to lower the operational carbon of a building during the use phase.
This practice provides a method for calculating the carbon payback period associated with energy-saving building products that passively impact the operational energy of residential and commercial buildings. A similar approach could be taken with active products, but the calculations would be much more complex and are not included in this practice.
Keywords
building product; energy efficiency; environmental; green building; indoor environmental quality (IEQ); sustainability; sustainable; payback, Greenhouse Gas, Operational Energy; embodied carbon
Rationale
This standard practice will help the building community to appropriately account for the impacts of passive products in reducing the carbon footprint of a building. There is currently no standard practice for accounting for the positive impacts some products can have, though there have been white papers published by industry.
The types of materials, products and systems that could benefit from such analyses include, but are not limited to: insulation, highly reflective interior surfaces that increase the efficacy of lighting, sunshades, phase change materials.
The title and scope are in draft form and are under development within this ASTM Committee.
Work Item Status
Date Initiated: 02-02-2026
Technical Contact: Marsha Bischel
Item: 000
Ballot:
Status: