With a view to meeting growing market demand and reducing the environmental impact of its production processes in line with its Roadmap to Carbon Neutrality, AGC Glass Europe launched its Low-Carbon Glass range in 2022. Today,  the company announces the launch of Low-Carbon Pyrobel Glass, its new fire-resistant glass product featuring significantly reduced embodied carbon¹.

To reduce greenhouse gas emissions when producing Low-Carbon Pyrobel Glass, a holistic approach is applied across the entire value chain. Not only is the recycled content² of Low-Carbon Glass above 50%, but it is produced with sustainably sourced raw materials in highly efficient melting furnaces with electro-boosting and renewable energy. Moreover, transport between AGC Group sites for finishing processes has been optimised.
Low-Carbon Pyrobel Glass delivers the same aesthetics, quality, technical performance and fire-resistant properties as AGC’s standard Pyrobel.

Developing sustainable buildings with EPD-certified products

AGC has a large portfolio of products featuring third-party verified Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs). Pyrobel’s environmental performance has been available in a third-party verified EPD since 2018 and Pyrobel delivers best-in-class results in terms of Global Warming Potential. For example, the embodied carbon of Pyrobel 16 is 60.5 kgCO2eq/m², while that of Pyrobel 25 is 98.1 kgCO2eq/m². 

Today, Low-Carbon Pyrobel Glass combines the performance of AGC’s Low-Carbon Glass (verified EPD published in May 2024), the use of green electricity and the optimisation of the manufacturing process to achieve a 45 to 50% reduction in embodied carbon compared to standard Pyrobel³. The verified EPD for Low-Carbon Pyrobel Glass will be issued within the next few months after third-party verification. 

Professionals can use these EPD documents to help them make informed choices when developing more sustainable buildings having lower environmental impacts. 

1. Currently available: Pyrobelite 10, Pyrobel 16, Pyrobel 25. Other compositions will be available at a later stage.
2. Calculated according to ISO 14021:2016, excluding internal cullet
3. Global Warming Potential (GWP) of standard Pyrobel version from third-party verified EPDs has been compared with the GWP estimations for the same Pyrobel products using Low-Carbon Planibel as substrates and renewable energy. Those GWP estimations has been calculated using Life Cycle Assessment models, production data and data from Planibel Low-Carbon EPD.