IS Materials Advice: Turn copper power cabling from a hidden hotspot into a competitive edge

On a recent infrastructure project where we were assisting with an Infrastructure Sustainability (IS) rating, I compared the materials' carbon footprint to the IS Enviropoints footprint. In the carbon pie chart below, copper power cabling accounted for about 5% of total material emissions.

In the IS Enviropoints chart for the same project, cabling jumped to around 42% of the impact. Asphalt, concrete, steel and other materials tracked closely between the two views, but copper did not.

That means cabling can account for almost half of the IS materials' impact, even though it’s a relatively small slice of the project’s carbon footprint. IS Enviropoints measures a project’s materials impact reduction, with points feeding directly into the overall rating. If you supply cabling into IS-rated infrastructure, this is a big deal: your EPD, or the lack of one, can move a project’s score more than almost any other product decision.

What your clients are already doing

Given how sensitive Enviropoints are to cabling, sustainability managers on IS-rated projects are increasingly:

• Putting cable procurement on their IS agenda from the start

• Demanding EPDs at a minimum from cable suppliers, just as they already do for steel, concrete and asphalt

• Checking that those EPDs have:

  • Practical functional units, and

  • The right impact categories are reported, so IS Enviropoints can be calculated.

    
    

Many are also bringing in an LCA practitioner to compare Enviropoints across different suppliers’ EPDs, and to see how those differences play out in the final project score. In practice, that means your data is already being benchmarked against your competitors’, whether you know it or not.

If cabling is 42% of your clients’ Enviropoints, the choice of supplier is a strategic lever for them and a competitive differentiator for you.

Your opportunity – and your risk

This is where it gets interesting for you. A robust, locally applicable, correctly structured EPD is a genuine competitive advantage. Not having one is a genuine competitive risk: your clients are comparing suppliers, whether or not you’re in the conversation.

If you produce a robust, locally applicable EPD for your cables and structure it correctly, you can:

• Replace generic assumptions with product-specific data that reflects your actual performance.

• Reduce the Enviropoints attributed to your cables compared to default datasets, unlocking real “savings” for IS-rated projects.

• Help infrastructure clients hit stronger materials improvement scores, making your product the easier choice in bids and design decisions.

Skip this, and you’re not just missing an opportunity; you risk being designed out of IS-rated projects altogether, regardless of how good your product actually is, simply because a competitor’s data is doing the talking instead of yours.

That said, not every EPD delivers this advantage. The common pitfalls:

Unhelpful functional units

If it doesn’t match your client's bill of quantities format or isn’t easily comparable, then it isn’t useful to projects.

Missing or misaligned impact categories

If the EPD doesn’t report the impact categories needed for IS Enviropoint calculations, then IS projects cannot use your data to improve their score, even though you have an EPD.

Get it right, and cable suppliers can genuinely shift a project’s Enviropoint profile. We’ve already seen cable EPDs with relevant impacts far below the generic copper default, generating Enviropoints around 70% lower than the standard assumption. That’s exactly the result sustainability managers are looking for, and exactly the edge that wins the comparison for you.

How we fit in

At Perspektiv, we:

• Develop EPDs for infrastructure products, including cables, with functional units and impact reporting chosen so they are usable in IS LCAs.

• Work on IS Rating LCAs every day, so we know how Enviropoints respond to changes in product data and where the biggest levers are.

• Help sustainability teams, procurement and suppliers compare Enviropoint and carbon performance, quickly and clearly.

If you’re a cable supplier wanting your EPD to actually move the needle in IS Enviropoint comparisons, not just tick a box, I’d be keen to talk. If you’re a sustainability manager trying to make sense of your suppliers’ EPDs, that conversation works too.