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Environmental regulations

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In the future environmental regulation, RE 2020, the overall performance of the structure will be considered. Two elements will be taken into account for the calculation: the thermal resistance and the carbon impact of the door and window frames.

As was the case for the RT 2012 regulation, the energy performance will be evaluated for the structure as a whole. For exterior joinery, the guiding principles consist of increasing the thresholds, both for heat in winter and for coolness in summer, and these products should help meet these objectives. This will improve the performance in terms of heat loss and solar gain.

For the carbon criterion, the quantities of greenhouse gas emitted across the entire life cycle of the joinery will be included in the calculation of the building's overall environmental impact, which will have to be below a given threshold, expressed in kg CO2 equivalent generated in the atmosphere.

The designer will have to make informed choices according to the project's constraints. To make these choices, designers will be able to refer to manufacturers' environmental declarations, known as FDES datasheets for construction products, listed on the website INIES.fr. About thirty “Windows” datasheets, representing nearly 10,000 commercial references, are identified in the 3,905 “Construction products” datasheets available in the database.

If the product does not have an FDES datasheet, its environmental impact will be calculated on the basis of default environmental data.

Environmental Impact of Windows

Based on reference data from environmental declaration datasheets on the website INIES.fr, representative of the construction market in France.

Carbon impact: 150 kg of CO2 on average over a fifty-year period

A window declared in the INIES database emits an average of 150 kg of CO2/m² over a fifty-year period. The most efficient windows have a carbon impact below 100 kg CO2 equivalent. All types of materials are represented, and they can reach good or very good performance levels.

The window's entire life cycle is taken into account in the calculation of the carbon impact: production, packaging, transport, implementation, phase of use, disassembly and end-of-life dismantling.

Circularity: 26% on average

Windows declared in the INIES database have an average circularity rate of 26%. The most efficient windows have a rate higher than 30%, in terms of both input and output materials.

Circularity rate: the ratio between the weight of the materials considered as circular (was recycled, will be recycled, is bio-sourced, reused) and the weight of the product (packaging included). This rate pertains to the input materials on the one hand, and the output materials on the other hand; an overall circularity rate can be calculated by averaging the two previous ones.