The leading life cycle assessment platform One Click LCA and the Finnish Data Center Association (FDCA) are launching a partnership that extends the data center industry’s environmental focus beyond energy use to the emissions embedded in construction and equipment. Through this collaboration, FDCA members gain free training, events, and membership benefits for life cycle assessment and Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) tools.
Until now, environmental work in data centers has focused on energy use. Energy efficiency metrics such as PUE capture operational consumption and the emissions it generates, but they say nothing about the emissions created before a facility even opens: from concrete, steel, servers, electrical and cooling systems, and the full equipment infrastructure. As operational energy gets cleaner, the share of total footprint coming from embodied carbon in construction and equipment only grows.
“Finland’s data center industry is used to leading the pack. We were involved in setting global energy efficiency standards for data centers and establishing waste heat recovery as standard practice in data center construction, and we are still at the front. We are not waiting for regulation to force the next step. We are taking it ourselves. Once we understand full life cycle emissions and start reducing them, we set the direction. This is a competitive advantage for the Finnish industry.” — Antti Poikola, Executive Director, FDCA
Underscoring the timeliness of this topic, Google announced a €13 billion investment in Finland, expanding its data center in Hamina and building new facilities in Kajaani, Muhos, and Vaala. It is Google’s largest single investment in Europe. The scale of this investment makes measuring the emissions embedded in construction and equipment even more urgent.
Data centers’ place in Finland’s low-carbon building regulation is still being clarified
Finland’s low-carbon building regulation took effect at the start of 2026. New buildings must now include a climate declaration, and government decree sets carbon footprint limits by building use category. Where data centers fit within this framework has not yet been definitively resolved.
“Data centers were not a major focus when the carbon footprint limits were being prepared. The question of whether they fall within the scope of the climate declaration requirement has only come up more strongly in recent times, and it is expected to be clarified.” — Maria Tiainen, Senior Specialist, Ministry of the Environment
The starting point has been that a climate declaration is required wherever a building needs an energy performance certificate. The building control authority currently makes the final call.
The national assessment covers the main building services systems. In data centers, these systems are exceptionally large in both scale and energy consumption.
Component-level calculations rely on product-specific Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) or on generic data points, for example from the national emissions database.
“Data centers are now a driver of construction growth, and their environmental impact is getting more attention. A data center is a building services led structure, and that is exactly where product-specific data is hardest to find. A result calculated from generic averages says nothing about real differences between suppliers, and it gives no one a reason to improve. Equipment manufacturers who publish Environmental Product Declarations for their products and reduce their environmental impact have a clear edge in major procurement decisions.” — Panu Pasanen, CEO, One Click LCA
Regulation beyond Finland is moving the same way. The revised Construction Products Regulation (EU) 2024/3110 requires manufacturers to declare the climate impact (GWP) of their products. The requirements will expand by product group as harmonized standards are revised, with concrete, steel, and insulation first in line.
Buyer requirements have tightened
The gap in product-specific data that Pasanen points to has become more visible as the industry’s largest buyers have shifted, over the past three years, from industry appeals to shared specifications.
In July 2024, the governing body of the iMasons Climate Accord, which includes AWS, Digital Realty, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Schneider Electric, published an open letter to data center suppliers. The letter calls on suppliers to produce Type III, ISO or EN standard verified EPDs for their products using shared product category rules. The rationale is commercial: too few suppliers publish EPDs, which hampers procurement of low-carbon materials and equipment, complicates emissions reporting to stakeholders including regulators, and can put operators’ contracts with certain customer groups at risk.
In October 2025, the work advanced to specification. The Open Compute Project Foundation, together with the iMasons Climate Accord, published the Embodied Carbon Disclosure, OCP Base Specification, developed with input from many of the same organizations. The specification creates a shared, open framework for reporting carbon data on data center equipment.
The requirement also shows up in contracts. Equinix states in its sustainability reporting that it has updated its general contractor agreement template to reserve the right to request product-specific carbon data in the form of EPDs or life cycle assessments (LCAs), and, where more detailed product-specific data is unavailable, a bill of materials.
Finnish suppliers should assume carbon data will be requested, and consider whether it exists in the format and standard their customers can actually use. Industry average figures are not enough once a specification calls for product-specific, verified data.
The partnership keeps Finnish suppliers competitive in data center projects
The industry has lacked a shared, comparable way to measure the impact of construction and equipment. Without reliable data, improvements cannot be credibly demonstrated or systematically pursued. The FDCA and One Click LCA partnership addresses this.
FDCA member companies gain the tools and expertise to measure construction and equipment emissions across the full value chain. Accurate data is the precondition for reducing emissions: once embodied carbon is known, design choices such as extending service life, reusing equipment, and more precise sizing can be shown as real emissions reductions. FDCA gains a measurable, results-based foundation for participating in public debate.
Finnish companies supplying data center projects compete for the same contracts as international manufacturers. When a buyer requires product-specific, verified carbon data, its lack can disqualify a supplier before price or quality even enter the conversation. This partnership supports Finnish construction and equipment suppliers to produce the required data in the same format as the largest international players.
Building data centers in Finland presents some obvious advantages: they run on renewable energy, nuclear power, and a cool climate keeps operational emissions low.
When a Finnish operator also measures the carbon footprint of construction and equipment, it can show international customers its full footprint and back it up with documentation. Measurement turns Finland’s natural advantage into a verifiable selling point.
Making data center emissions visible: online event on October 6, 2026
One Click LCA and FDCA invite members, media, and data center suppliers to a launch event on October 6, 2026, at 10:00 am. The event will cover measuring construction and value chain emissions and turning that measurement into a competitive advantage in practice, with remarks from companies that build data centers as well as their construction material suppliers. The event is open to FDCA members, data center suppliers, and media.
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About One Click LCA
One Click LCA is the world’s largest life cycle assessment (LCA) platform, delivering impact, compliance, and growth in +170 countries. It brings together the in-depth modelling capabilities of SimaPro with the ease-of-use and scalability of One Click LCA. The platform includes the most comprehensive global LCA database, with +500,000 datasets, and serves customers across manufacturing, construction, infrastructure, chemicals, and consumer goods supply chains, among others. One Click LCA is committed to powering one-million makers of a zero-carbon future by 2035 for an impact at a planetary scale. Learn more at: oneclicklca.com