This all-wood, circular and energy-neutral building has sustainability high on its agenda. The high-end ambition is to develop a healthy, integrally sustainable and Paris-proof building, with measurable targets such as the highest certification levels as WELL Platinum and BREEAM Outstanding and a ‘Whole Life Carbon’ footprint of <200kgCO2/m2. The latter method aims to measure and assess the totalCO2 emissions over the entire lifetime of a construction project, of a product or building. Not only during use, but also during production and construction.
Environmental burden during production and use
The environmental burden of all materials used was therefore critically assessed. And the balance between the environmental burden during production and during the use of the material in question was accurately calculated.
The same applies to the facade glazing that Vandaglas was asked to produce and supply. We opted for double and triple-leaf insulating glass composed of low-carbon float glass components combined with a high-performance solar control low-e coating: IsoPerform LCG XTR70/33 ORAÉ.
ORAÉ is the first low carbon base float glass on the market and is produced by Saint-Gobain. The production of ORAÉ low carbon float glass has the lowest carbon footprint in the world at 6.64kgCO2 eq . per m². This 42% reduction compared to Saint-Gobain Glass' European baseline for clear glass was obtained thanks to adding a remarkably high amount of recycled glass cullet (64%) in the melting process. Without any compromise on technical, qualitative or aesthetic performance.
CO2 reduction in production
Compared to theCO2 emissions for the production of standard HR++ insulating glass, the overall production process, A1-A3, of IsoPerform LCG XTR70/33 ORAÉ, has a significantly reducedCO2footprint. In life cycle analysis (LCA), the ‘A1-A3’ term stands for the production phase: from production of basic float glass to assembly of the basic float glass into double insulating glass.
For Pearl in the Polder, this meant an overall reduction inCO2 emissions of 33%, for the production of the number of square metres supplied:
Burden of proof: EPD and NMD
On the basis of the verified, separate Environmental Product Declarations (EPD) of both Saint-Gobain's ORAÉ base glass and Vandaglas' assembled insulating glass, IsoPerform and TriplePerform LCG XTR70/33 ORAÉ have been included in the National Environmental Database (NMD) with Category 1, branded, environmental maps.
CO2 reduction in use
The performance selectivity (TL/g) with a solar heat reflectance of g 0.33 and a daylight transmittance of TL 70% combined with a thermal insulation of 1.0 W/m2.K also let this type of IsoPerform in use contribute strongly to energy consumption reduction. Compared to standard HR++ glass (Ug 1.2 W/m2.K), it delivers a minimum reduction of 4.39 kg,CO2 eq perm2 per year.
