Saint-Gobain Glass leads the way: world’s first low-carbon glass

Saint-Gobain Glass has achieved a landmark technical innovation enabling it to offer a new glass with the lowest embodied carbon on the façade market. This industry first was accomplished through a production combining high recycled glass content (around 70 percent of cullet) and renewable energy, thanks to a substantial R&D effort and the excellence of the company’s industrial teams.

As façades represent up to 20 percent of a building’s carbon footprint, this innovation will significantly reduce the carbon footprint of construction and accelerate the development of the circular economy.

Saint-Gobain Glass’s innovation echoes the first zero carbon production (see note below) completed in May 2022 at its Aniche factory in France, which allowed the company to significantly refine its manufacturing processes and expertise.

Saint-Gobain Glass is now integrating low carbon products in its portfolio of solutions for façades, starting with the COOL-LITE® XTREME solar control range, without any compromise on technical or aesthetic performance.

The new products will use a glass with an estimated carbon footprint of only 7 kg CO2 eq/m2 (for a 4 millimetre m substrate). This new low carbon glass will be combined with the existing COOL-LITE® XTREME coating technology, which already drastically reduces carbon emissions generated by energy consumption needed when using the building thanks to its high performance in terms of daylight intake, solar control and thermal insulation. As a result, the new range will offer the lowest carbon footprint on the market with a reduction of around 40 percent compared to the company’s European baseline products.

The detailed environmental data will be documented through third party-verified environmental product declarations – EPDs (or FDES in France) – which are currently under development and scheduled for availability in in early 2023.

As an early demonstration of the market’s enthusiasm, three major real estate partners, Bouygues Immobilier, Icade Santé and Nexity, have already committed to use low carbon COOL-LITE® XTREME glass in their projects:

• Bouygues Immobilier will implement it on its office building operation Kalifornia (Hauts-de-Seine, France)

• Icade Santé will install it on the Elsan Group Polyclinique du Parc in Caen (Calvados, France)

• Nexity will use it on the Carré Invalides rehabilitation (Paris, France).

This pioneering initiative is a first step towards an expanded low carbon offer across the different markets of Saint-Gobain Glass. It is fully in line with the Saint-Gobain Group‘s Grow & Impact strategy, in particular the roadmap towards carbon neutrality by 2050.

Note: Scope 1 = direct emissions (energy and process), Scope 2 = indirect emissions related to supplied energies (electricity, heating….)