Pipelife sets industry milestone with first Irish-made pipe EPDs

Pipelife Ireland has gained Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) for its Qual-Pex Plus+ ‘Easy Lay’ pipe range – making them the first Irish-made pipes to have independently verified embodied carbon data.

A high-performance, multi-purpose piping system, Qual-Pex Plus+ is engineered for the reliable distribution of hot and cold water, central heating, and underfloor heating. It is designed to last for a building’s whole life – thereby reducing the building’s whole-life carbon impact.

Pipelife’s decision to obtain EPDs for all seven sizes of its Qual-Pex Plus+ pipe range comes as larger developers and public bodies face obligations to calculate and reduce the embodied carbon of buildings, with the rest of the industry set to follow imminently as new EU rules take hold.

Conor Manning, Managing Director, Pipelife Ireland, said, “Securing EPDs for our entire Qual-Pex Plus+ pipe range reflects our commitment to supporting developers and public bodies as they work to measure and reduce the embodied carbon of buildings. It ensures that Pipelife continues to stand firmly behind our customers as embodied-carbon reporting becomes a compulsory requirement across the industry under new EU directives.”

Irish Green Building Council chief executive Pat Barry congratulated Pipelife. He said, “It is fantastic to see leadership in Irish manufacturers reacting to the imperatives of the EPBD and producing the data that will be needed in the coming years through the production of verified EPD. It is particularly exciting to see data for components used in building services, as this is one of the largest data gaps in whole life carbon assessment, and we need more manufacturers to provide this data.”

The Qual-Pex Plus+ EPDs include a 50-year reference service life. Ireland’s whole-life carbon calculation methodology sets a reference study period of 50 years for each building – meaning calculations done with Qual-Pex Plus+ will avoid projected emissions from replacement pipes.