Service life 0 and calculation mode
Setting a building product’s service life to 0 means different things depending on which calculation mode the project uses.
Only in BR18 (2023) is the impact zeroed
Section titled “Only in BR18 (2023) is the impact zeroed”In BR18 (2023), a service life of 0 zeroes the building product’s entire environmental impact, across all modules, not just A1-A3. The mass of the building product is still preserved in the underlying data basis, but its result becomes 0 in every module. The behaviour is enabled specifically for BR18 (2023) and stems from a corresponding function in LCAbyg 5.
In all other calculation modes (including BR18 (2025)) the ordinary behaviour applies instead: the building product is counted as embodied in the calculation, without any replacement (B4) being calculated for it. Service life 0 is therefore not a global rule, it is a setting tied to the individual calculation mode.
Why it is data-driven
Section titled “Why it is data-driven”Whether service life 0 zeroes the impact or not depends on which calculation mode the project’s version uses, not on a fixed rule in the calculation engine itself. If a project switches calculation mode from BR18 (2023) to, say, BR18 (2025), a building product with service life 0 can therefore go from contributing nothing to counting fully towards the result, without the building product itself having changed.