Research and analysis
Data quality of life cycle assessments of steel, cement and concrete products
This research project aimed to increase understanding of the data used to calculate embodied emissions of construction products.
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This research project was an assessment of data quality of life cycle assessments of steel, cement and concrete products. Its objectives were to:
- understand the issues and impact of using generic or specific data, and variability in methodological choices and choice of standards
- develop policy understanding of using different emissions accounting standards, and prevalence for different types of products, both imported and produced in the UK
- compare EU CBAM methodology and other life cycle assessment standards for measuring the life cycle emissions of steel, iron, cement and concrete products
- produce quantified evidence to evaluate challenges in LCA methodology to feed into international consensus-building exercises such as the International Energy Agency (IEA) Working Party for Industrial Decarbonisation (WPID), and the Industrial Deep Decarbonisation Initiative (IDDI)
- understand how UK steel, iron, cement and concrete products sit on different benchmarking thresholds
- produce an initial assessment of the proportion of emissions across each life cycle stage, and how embodied emissions could be reduced across these stages
The project was undertaken by Frazer-Nash Consultancy Ltd between July 2024 and October 2025.
Updates to this page
Published 26 May 2026