The exterior of the completed Wood Design and Innovation Design Centre (WIDC) in Prince George, BC
Photography: Ema Peter
This document presents a whole-building environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) of the Wood Innovation and Design Centre (WIDC), a mixed-use building that opened in October 2014 in Prince George, British Columbia, Canada.
The purpose of this assessment is to publicly declare the environmental performance of the WIDC building. This document presents an estimate of the environmental performance of WIDC according to a standardized format in order to publicly communicate results in a transparent and comparable manner. The intended use of this assessment is for educating/informing building and wood-industry stakeholders about the environmental implications of the WIDC design, and wood-based mid and high-rise construction in general.
The assessment has been conducted in conformance with the Committee for European Standardization (CEN) standard EN 159781, which stipulates an LCA-based calculation method and reporting requirements for whole-buildings or building parts. While European in scope, EN 15978 provisions are quickly becoming the standard for whole-building LCA worldwide.
The Environmental Building Declaration Summary reports the lifetime environmental footprint of this building. Results were calculated using an analytical technique known as life cycle assessment (LCA), a scientific method for assessing all the interactions between a building and nature and estimating the resultant burdens on air, land and water. This resource is also publicly available in the Athena Sustainable Materials Institute.
