Case study: Whole-life carbon assessment & regulation — a startup-to-enterprise scale story

When One Click LCA launched in Helsinki in 2013, the market for automated whole-life carbon (WLC) assessment in construction barely existed. Building regulations in Europe focused almost exclusively on operational energy, and the concept of measuring embodied carbon across a structure's full lifecycle, from raw material extraction through demolition and disposal, was largely confined to academic research papers. By 2025, the company had grown to serve over 15,000 users across 170 countries, processed more than 50,000 building assessments, secured contracts with five of the ten largest construction firms globally, and positioned itself at the center of a regulatory shift that is fundamentally reshaping how buildings are designed, specified, and approved. The trajectory from niche Finnish startup to global enterprise offers concrete lessons for founders, policymakers, and compliance professionals navigating the intersection of climate regulation and built environment decarbonization.

Why It Matters

Buildings account for approximately 37% of global energy-related carbon emissions, according to the UN Environment Programme's 2024 Global Status Report for Buildings and Construction. Historically, regulatory attention concentrated on operational emissions: heating, cooling, lighting, and plug loads during a building's use phase. This made sense when operational carbon dominated lifecycle emissions. But as building energy codes have tightened and renewable electricity has expanded, the relative share of embodied carbon has grown dramatically. For a new, high-performance building in Northern Europe or the Pacific Northwest, embodied carbon now represents 50 to 70% of total lifecycle emissions.

The UK's regulatory trajectory illustrates this shift. The Greater London Authority (GLA) introduced whole-life carbon assessments as a planning requirement for referrable developments in 2022, making London one of the first major jurisdictions to mandate WLC reporting. The UK Green Building Council's Net Zero Carbon Buildings Framework, updated in 2024, established embodied carbon intensity targets of 500 kgCO2e/m2 (GIA) for residential and 350 kgCO2e/m2 for commercial buildings. France's RE2020 regulation, effective since January 2022, imposed binding embodied carbon limits on new construction, with thresholds tightening every three years through 2031. The Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland have all implemented or announced mandatory WLC assessment requirements.

For compliance professionals and policymakers, this regulatory proliferation creates both opportunity and complexity. Each jurisdiction defines system boundaries, life cycle stages, data quality requirements, and reporting formats differently. A developer operating across London, Paris, and Amsterdam must navigate three distinct regulatory frameworks, each with its own reference databases, calculation methodologies, and submission processes. The market for tools that automate and standardize this process is not merely convenient but operationally essential.

The Startup Phase: 2013 to 2018

Finding Product-Market Fit

One Click LCA was founded by Panu Pasanen, a construction industry veteran who had spent a decade working on sustainability consulting and green building certification. The initial insight was straightforward: life cycle assessment (LCA) for buildings was technically well-understood but practically inaccessible. A typical manual WLC assessment required 80 to 120 hours of specialist consultant time, cost $15,000 to $40,000, and produced results that arrived too late in the design process to influence material selection decisions. Architects and engineers who wanted to reduce embodied carbon lacked tools that could provide rapid, iterative feedback during early design stages when 80% of carbon impact is determined.

The first product version, launched in 2014, automated the connection between building information models (BIM) and environmental product declarations (EPDs), reducing assessment time from weeks to hours. Early adopters were primarily Finnish and Nordic architectural firms already engaged with voluntary green building certification programs, particularly BREEAM and LEED, where LCA credits offered competitive advantages in certification scoring.

Revenue in the first two years was modest: approximately EUR 200,000 annually, generated through a combination of software licenses and consulting engagements. The company operated with a team of six, funded primarily through Finnish innovation grants from Business Finland (then Tekes) and a small seed round from Nordic venture investors.

Critical Early Decisions

Three strategic decisions during this phase proved consequential for later scaling. First, the team invested heavily in building a proprietary database of construction material environmental data, aggregating EPDs from manufacturers across Europe and mapping them to regional construction practices. By 2018, this database contained over 15,000 verified EPD records, creating a data moat that competitors could not easily replicate.

Second, the company chose to support multiple green building certification schemes (BREEAM, LEED, DGNB, Level(s)) rather than optimizing for any single framework. This decision increased development complexity but positioned the platform for cross-border enterprise clients who operated under multiple certification requirements simultaneously.

Third, One Click LCA maintained compatibility with all major BIM platforms (Autodesk Revit, Graphisoft ArchiCAD, Trimble Tekla) through dedicated plugins, ensuring that WLC assessment could be embedded directly into existing design workflows rather than requiring architects to adopt a separate tool.

The Growth Phase: 2018 to 2022

Regulatory Tailwinds

The period from 2018 to 2022 transformed the WLC assessment market from voluntary best practice to regulatory requirement. France's RE2020 regulation, announced in 2020 and effective in 2022, was the catalyst. For the first time, a major European economy required builders to calculate and comply with binding embodied carbon limits. The regulation specified EN 15978 as the reference methodology and required assessment across all lifecycle stages from A1-A3 (product stage) through C1-C4 (end of life), with a mandatory 50-year reference study period.

One Click LCA had already built EN 15978 compliance into its platform, but the French market required integration with the national environmental database (INIES) and alignment with the E+C- experimental label methodology that preceded RE2020. The company invested approximately EUR 1.5 million in French market localization, including hiring a Paris-based team of five engineers and regulatory specialists.

Revenue growth accelerated dramatically. Annual recurring revenue grew from approximately EUR 2 million in 2018 to EUR 12 million in 2022, driven by a combination of new regulatory mandates, expanding enterprise contracts, and geographic expansion. The client base shifted from predominantly small architectural practices to large construction companies, property developers, and engineering consultancies. Skanska, one of Europe's largest construction firms, adopted One Click LCA as its global standard for embodied carbon assessment in 2020, deploying the platform across operations in Sweden, Norway, Finland, the UK, and the Czech Republic.

Funding and Team Scaling

The company raised a EUR 10 million Series A round in 2021, led by London-based sustainability-focused venture capital firm 2150, with participation from Nordic institutional investors. The funds supported expansion into the UK market (timed to coincide with the GLA's WLC planning requirements), product development for infrastructure applications (roads, bridges, tunnels), and the buildout of an automated benchmarking engine that compared project-level carbon intensity against regional and typological baselines.

Headcount grew from 25 in 2018 to approximately 120 by the end of 2022, with offices in Helsinki, London, Paris, and New York. The hiring mix shifted toward enterprise sales, customer success, and regulatory affairs professionals, reflecting the transition from a product-led growth model (individual architects discovering the tool) to an enterprise sales motion targeting chief sustainability officers and heads of design at major construction companies.

Enterprise Scale: 2023 to Present

Navigating Regulatory Fragmentation

By 2024, the company tracked and maintained compliance with WLC regulations and reporting requirements across 24 national jurisdictions, including France (RE2020), Netherlands (MPG), Denmark (LCA requirements in BR18), Finland (national carbon footprint requirement), Sweden (klimatdeklaration), and the GLA's London Plan requirements. Each jurisdiction imposed distinct system boundaries, reference service lives, biogenic carbon accounting rules, and data quality thresholds.

Managing this regulatory fragmentation became a core competitive advantage. The platform's regulatory engine automatically applies jurisdiction-specific rules when a user selects a project location, adjusting calculation parameters, available material databases, and reporting templates accordingly. This capability proved particularly valuable for multinational developers and contractors operating across European markets, who would otherwise need separate consultants in each country.

Enterprise Integration and Data Challenges

Scaling to enterprise clients revealed challenges that did not exist at the individual practitioner level. Large construction companies operate complex IT environments with multiple BIM platforms, enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, procurement databases, and project management tools. Integrating WLC assessment into these workflows required API development, single sign-on implementation, and custom data pipelines that connected material procurement records to carbon calculations.

Data quality emerged as the most persistent challenge. Enterprise clients expected assessment accuracy that required manufacturer-specific EPD data rather than generic database values. However, EPD availability varies dramatically by material category and geography. Structural steel and cement products have high EPD coverage (70 to 85% of European production volume), while mechanical, electrical, and plumbing (MEP) components, interior finishes, and specialty materials have much lower coverage (15 to 30%). One Click LCA addressed this gap by launching a manufacturer partnership program, providing free EPD generation tools to material producers in exchange for database integration.

Financial Performance and Market Position

By 2025, the company reported annual recurring revenue exceeding EUR 25 million, with a gross margin of approximately 75%. The client base included over 300 enterprise accounts and 15,000 individual users. The platform had processed more than 50,000 building assessments representing over 200 million square meters of floor area. The company raised an additional EUR 15 million in Series B funding in 2024 to support expansion into North American and Asian markets, where regulatory requirements are emerging but not yet as comprehensive as in Europe.

The competitive landscape evolved significantly during this period. Established players including Sphera (formerly thinkstep), SimaPro, and Athena Sustainable Materials Institute offered LCA capabilities, but none matched One Click LCA's focus on construction-specific automation and regulatory compliance. New entrants including EC3 (developed by the Building Transparency nonprofit in the US), Habx, and several BIM platform vendors began offering embedded carbon calculation features, though most covered only product-stage (A1-A3) emissions rather than full lifecycle assessment.

Lessons for Policymakers and Compliance Professionals

Standardization Reduces Compliance Costs

The single most impactful action policymakers can take is aligning national WLC requirements with the European standard EN 15978 (and its successor EN 15978-1, currently in development). France's decision to base RE2020 on this standard, combined with the European Commission's Level(s) framework, has created a degree of methodological convergence that reduces compliance costs for cross-border operators. Jurisdictions that develop proprietary methodologies impose disproportionate costs on the industry without commensurate environmental benefit.

Data Infrastructure Is a Public Good

The availability of high-quality, verified environmental data for construction materials is a prerequisite for effective WLC regulation. National EPD programs (such as France's INIES, Germany's OKOBAUDAT, and the UK's emerging national database) serve as critical public infrastructure. Policymakers should fund EPD generation for domestically produced materials, particularly for SME manufacturers who lack resources to produce declarations independently.

Phased Implementation with Clear Timelines Works

France's approach of announcing RE2020 targets in 2020, implementing initial requirements in 2022, and tightening thresholds at three-year intervals through 2031 gave the industry time to adopt tools, train staff, and adjust design practices. The UK's less prescriptive approach, combining GLA requirements with industry-led frameworks, has been effective in London but has created confusion outside the capital. Clear, nationally mandated timelines with progressive tightening, announced well in advance, produce the strongest compliance outcomes.

Embed Assessment in Planning and Permitting Workflows

WLC assessments deliver maximum value when required at planning application stage, not after construction. London's GLA requirement demonstrates that planning-stage assessment forces design teams to optimize material selection before specifications are locked. Post-construction reporting, by contrast, documents carbon intensity without influencing it.

Key Players

One Click LCA is the market leader in automated whole-life carbon assessment for buildings and infrastructure, serving over 15,000 users across 170 countries.

Building Transparency (EC3) offers a free, open-access embodied carbon calculator widely used in the US market, with particular strength in A1-A3 product-stage assessment.

Sphera provides comprehensive LCA software across multiple industries, with construction-specific modules integrated into its GaBi platform.

Ramboll has developed proprietary WLC assessment tools integrated into its engineering consultancy practice, with significant presence in Nordic and UK markets.

BRE Group administers BREEAM certification and maintains the IMPACT database for UK construction material environmental data.

Action Checklist

• Identify which WLC regulations and reporting requirements apply to your current and planned project jurisdictions
• Evaluate automated WLC assessment platforms against your BIM workflows, certification requirements, and geographic coverage needs
• Establish internal embodied carbon targets aligned with UKGBC, RIBA, or LETI benchmarks, even where regulation does not yet mandate specific thresholds
• Require manufacturer-specific EPDs for high-impact material categories (concrete, steel, insulation, cladding) in procurement specifications
• Train design teams to conduct WLC assessments at RIBA Stage 2 (concept design) when material substitution opportunities are greatest
• Develop internal databases of project-level WLC results to enable benchmarking and progressive improvement across your portfolio
• Engage with national standards bodies and industry groups contributing to EN 15978-1 development to ensure upcoming standards reflect practical implementation experience

Sources

• UN Environment Programme. (2024). 2024 Global Status Report for Buildings and Construction. Nairobi: UNEP.
• Greater London Authority. (2022). Whole Life-Cycle Carbon Assessments: London Plan Guidance. London: GLA.
• UK Green Building Council. (2024). Net Zero Carbon Buildings Framework: 2024 Update. London: UKGBC.
• French Ministry of Ecological Transition. (2021). RE2020: Environmental Regulation for New Buildings. Paris: MTE.
• European Commission. (2024). Level(s): European Framework for Sustainable Buildings, Technical Guidance. Brussels: EC Joint Research Centre.
• One Click LCA. (2025). Annual Impact Report: 50,000 Assessments and Counting. Helsinki: One Click LCA Oy.
• Royal Institute of British Architects. (2023). RIBA 2030 Climate Challenge: Embodied Carbon Targets. London: RIBA.