IEC TR 62422:2007

TECHNICAL IEC
REPORT TR 62422
First edition
2007-03
Environmental characterization of solid
insulating materials
Reference number
IEC/TR 62422:2007(E)
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TECHNICAL IEC
REPORT TR 62422
First edition
2007-03
Environmental characterization of solid
insulating materials
© IEC 2007 ⎯ Copyright - all rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying and microfilm, without permission in writing from the publisher.
International Electrotechnical Commission, 3, rue de Varembé, PO Box 131, CH-1211 Geneva 20, Switzerland
Telephone: +41 22 919 02 11 Telefax: +41 22 919 03 00 E-mail: inmail@iec.ch Web: www.iec.ch
PRICE CODE
Commission Electrotechnique Internationale S

International Electrotechnical Commission
МеждународнаяЭлектротехническаяКомиссия
For price, see current catalogue

– 2 – TR 62422 © IEC:2007(E)
CONTENTS
FOREWORD.3
INTRODUCTION.5

1 Scope.6
2 Normative references .6
3 Terms and definitions .6
4 Methodological framework .8
4.1 General .8
4.2 Goal and scope definition .8
4.2.1 General .8
4.2.2 Functional unit.8
4.2.3 System boundaries .8
4.2.4 Allocation rules.8
4.2.5 Data quality requirements.9
4.3 Life-Cycle Inventory (LCI).9
4.4 Impact assessment.10
4.5 Interpretation.10
5 Material Category Requirements (MCR) .10
6 Material Environmental Information Data Sheet (MEIDS).11
6.1 General .11
6.2 Resource use .11
6.3 Pollutant emissions (expressed in terms of potential environmental impact) .11
6.4 Waste generation .12
6.5 Additional information.12

Annex A (informative) Material category requirements (MCR) – Examples .13
Annex B (informative) Material Environmental Information Data Sheet – Example.18

Bibliography.21

Figure 1 – Schematic diagram showing the main life cycles stages of a typical
polymeric insulating material.13

TR 62422 © IEC:2007(E) – 3 –
INTERNATIONAL ELECTROTECHNICAL COMMISSION
____________
ENVIRONMENTAL CHARACTERIZATION OF SOLID
INSULATING MATERIALS
FOREWORD
1) The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) is a worldwide organization for standardization comprising
all national electrotechnical committees (IEC National Committees). The object of IEC is to promote
international co-operation on all questions concerning standardization in the electrical and electronic fields. To
this end and in addition to other activities, IEC publishes International Standards, Technical Specifications,
Technical Reports, Publicly Available Specifications (PAS) and Guides (hereafter referred to as “IEC
Publication(s)”). Their preparation is entrusted to technical committees; any IEC National Committee interested
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with the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in accordance with conditions determined by
agreement between the two organizations.
2) The formal decisions or agreements of IEC on technical matters express, as nearly as possible, an international
consensus of opinion on the relevant subjects since each technical committee has representation from all
interested IEC National Committees.
3) IEC Publications have the form of recommendations for international use and are accepted by IEC National
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8) Attention is drawn to the Normative references cited in this publication. Use of the referenced publications is
indispensable for the correct application of this publication.
9) Attention is drawn to the possibility that some of the elements of this IEC Publication may be the subject of
patent rights. IEC shall not be held responsible for identifying any or all such patent rights.
The main task of IEC technical committees is to prepare International Standards. However, a
technical committee may propose the publication of a technical report when it has collected
data of a different kind from that which is normally published as an International Standard, for
example "state of the art".
IEC 62422, which is a technical report, has been prepared by IEC technical committee 15:
Solid electrical insulating materials.
The text of this technical report is based on the following documents:
Enquiry draft Report on voting
15/346/DTR 15/356/RVC
Full information on the voting for the approval of this technical report can be found in the
report on voting indicated in the above table.

– 4 – TR 62422 © IEC:2007(E)
This publication has been drafted in accordance with the ISO/IEC Directives, Part 2.
The committee has decided that the contents of this publication will remain unchanged until
the maintenance result date indicated on the IEC web site under "http://webstore.iec.ch" in
the data related to the specific publication. At this date, the publication will be:
• reconfirmed,
• withdrawn,
• replaced by a revised edition, or
• amended.
A bilingual version of this publication may be issued at a later date.

TR 62422 © IEC:2007(E) – 5 –
INTRODUCTION
Production, use and disposal of products may cause serious environmental problems.
Electrical and electronic products are among those that are suspected to have major impacts
to the environment due to their use of energy, the variety of hazardous substances included
and their volume on the market. It has to be noticed that the environmental performance of
these products is related to the characteristics of the insulating materials.
Environmental aspects are present in each phase of the life cycle of these materials. For
example, in some thermosetting resins, volatile hazardous chemical compounds are used in
production phase and spread during processing. On the other hand sometimes these
additives allow a better insulation performance with a lower indirect impact due to lower
electrical losses. Regarding the end of life, if these polymers are deposited at a landfill site,
the complete degradation of the material may take more than a century, and during this time
span harmful additives may be leached from the landfill site.
In order to minimize adverse environmental impacts of electrotechnical products, insulating
materials selection should be conducted by engineers and designers including environmental
considerations. The environmental information related to the investigated insulating materials
should be collected and processed, by suppliers, according to this document. The evaluation
should be developed at the design stage, in respect of specific uses and with a life cycle
perspective in mind. This means that the environmental characteristics of the materials used,
which are collected and processed according to this document, should be compared with the
environmental impacts due to the performance of the product and/or the system, with the
product before making material selection, product design, and so on.
In order to optimize the necessary trade-offs between fitness for use and environmental
impact minimization, it is important to have appropriate and comparable, i.e. standardized,
information on environmental aspects and impacts (direct and indirect) connected with
insulating materials entire life cycle. In particular, it is fundamental to have standardized
information concerning
– the production phase, such as information related to the consumption of resources and the
environmental impact, incurred during intermediate products manufacturing;
– the usage phase, such as information about harmful substances actually released and the
insulation performances;
– the end-of-life phase, such as the recyclability, the recoverability, the reusability, and
cautions to be taken into account when landfilling or chemically recycling.
The methodological framework for the environmental characterization of insulating materials
should be drafted in accordance with Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) (ISO 14040 standard)
principles.
– 6 – TR 62422 © IEC:2007(E)
ENVIRONMENTAL CHARACTERIZATION OF SOLID
INSULATING MATERIALS
1 Scope
This technical report gives framework guidelines for collecting environmental data of
insulating materials useful to engineers and designers of electrotechnical products for
evaluating environmental impacts.
It also provides a guideline for common format in environmental data reporting. This will
enable producers to more easily evaluate the potential environmental impacts of those
electrotechnical products using solid insulating materials.
Moreover, it will allow a quick assessment of conformity to relevant electrotechnical product-
related environmental regulations.
2 Normative references
The following referenced documents are indispensable for the application of this document.
For dated references, only the edition cited applies. For undated references, the latest edition
of the referenced document (including any amendments) applies.
ISO 14020, Environmental labels and declarations – General principles
3 Terms and definitions
For the purpose of this document the following terms and definitions apply.
3.1
additive
ingredient mixed into resin to improve properties
NOTE Examples include plasticizers, initiators, light stabilizers and flame retardants.
3.2
disposal
collection, sorting, transport and treatment of waste as well as its storage and tipping above
or under ground, or at sea
[EU Directive 75/442/EEC]
3.3
environment
surroundings in which an organization operates, including air, water, land, natural resources,
flora, fauna, humans, and their interrelation
[ISO 14001:2004, definition 3.5]
3.4
environmental aspect
element of an organization's activities, products or services that can interact with the
environment
TR 62422 © IEC:2007(E) – 7 –
NOTE A significant environmental aspect is an environmental aspect that has or can have a significant
environmental impact.
[ISO 14001:2004, definition 3.6]
3.5
environmental impact
any change to the environment, whether adverse or beneficial, wholly or partly resulting from
an organization's activities, products or services
[ISO 14001:2004, definition 3.7 modified]
3.6
incineration (of waste)
burning of waste at high temperatures in the presence of sufficient air to achieve complete
combustion, either to reduce its volume or its toxicity
3.7
landfill
engineered deposit of waste into or onto land in such a way that pollution or harm to the
environment is minimized or prevented and, through restoration, to provide land which may be
used for another purpose
3.8
recovery
any of the applicable operations involving reprocessing in a production process of waste
material for the purpose of reclamation of secondary materials or burning them with energy
recovery
[EU Directive 75/442/EEC]
3.9
recycling
reprocessing in a production process of the waste materials for the original purpose or for
other purposes, but excluding energy recovery which means the use of combustible waste as
a means of generating energy through direct incineration with or without other waste but with
recovery of the heat
[EU Directive 2002/96/EC]
3.10
recyclability
property of a substance or a material and parts/products made thereof that makes it possible
for them to be recycled
– 8 – TR 62422 © IEC:2007(E)
NOTE Recyclability of a product is not only determined by the recyclability of the materials it contains. Product
structure and logistics are also very important factors.
[IEC Guide 109:2003]
4 Methodological framework
4.1 General
The environmental performance of electrotechnical products should be described based on a
Life Cycle Thinking (LCT) approach. LCT approach considers a product’s life-cycle and aims
for a reduction of its cumulative environmental impacts. Although being based on the same
principles as a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), it is more qualitative and does not require the
thorough data analysis that full scale LCA relies on. Considering the life cycle of a product
allows implementation of a range of simple comparative measures with great benefits to the
environment.
The main aspects to be considered in this LCT approach, as for LCA, are as follows:
• definition of goal and scope of the study;
• compiling an inventory analysis of relevant inputs and outputs of the product system;
• evaluating the potential environmental impacts associated with these inputs and outputs;
• interpreting the results of the inventory analysis and impact assessment phases in relation
to the objectives of the study.
4.2 Goal and scope definition
4.2.1 General
According to the ISO standards, goal and scope definition must be explicitly stated in an LCA.
The goal contains some background information on the study, and describes in detail the
object of the study.
If the aim of an LCA is the comparison of different technologies providing the same service,
good LCA praxis requires uniform scopes with particular attention to the following aspects.
4.2.2 Functional unit
The functional unit of the study shall be the electrotechnical product including the selected
insulating materials.
4.2.3 System boundaries
In a real economy the relations between sectors, companies and processes are very complex
and for the model they have to be simplified in many respects. One of the most important
simplifications in LCA is the introduction of system boundaries and cut-off criteria. Without
these boundaries, the inventory of nearly any process would require an analysis of the whole
national economy. The boundaries now systematically cut off processes that have not a
significant influence on the results for the process in focus.
4.2.4 Allocation rules
In multi-output processes, environmental impacts have to be allocated to the different outputs
in a "fair" way. The methods available can in general be classified in two groups: substitution
or system enlargement, and allocation keys. In the substitution approach, all but one of the
outputs is assumed to replace the same commodity/service from an optional process, and the
original process is credited with the environmental impacts from this replaced process.
System enlargement is equivalent; here the environmental impacts from the optional process
are added to those processes that the multi-output process is compared to. When using an

TR 62422 © IEC:2007(E) – 9 –
allocation key, however, the total environmental impacts of the multi-output process are
allocated according to appropriate properties of the commodities/services produced, such as
mass, heating value or economic value (market price).
4.2.5 Data quality requirements
Data quality is a relevant matter in LCA studies and its consolidation may absorb most of the
time spent for the study if no guidelines are provided.
The following data quality requirements are usually considered:
– precision: measure of the variability of the data values for each data category expressed
(e.g. variance);
– completeness: percentage of locations reporting primary data from the potential number in
existence for each data category in a unit process;
– representativeness: qualitative assessment of degree to which the data set reflects the
true population of interest (i.e. geographical coverage, time period and technology
coverage);
– consistency: qualitative assessment of how uniformly the methodology is applied to the
various components of the analysis;
– reproducibility: qualitative assessment of the extent to which information about the
methodology and data values allows an independent practitioner to reproduce the results
reported.
It is useful to classify data quality according to these definitions:
– “primary data” is understood to be those data that were gathered in the field and hence
guarantee the highest degree of representativity of the system analyzed;
– “secondary data” is understood as those data that were used to complete the model for
the system being examined and that were taken from data base or studies previously
conducted and published.
4.3 Life-Cycle Inventory (LCI)
In this step, all material and energy flows that are relevant to the system are described and
integrated. It is usually the most labour-intensive part of an LCA. As a result of this step, all
inputs and outputs of the system are represented, normalized to the functional unit.
In the inventory all processes are characterized by their (useful) output and by a vector
containing the following parameters:
• Inputs (materials)
• Ancillaries (e.g. energy)
• Use of other services (disposal of by-products, transports, infrastructure)
• Direct elementary interaction with the environment in the form of
– emissions
– use of resources
The resulting set of vectors represents a set of linear equations that can be solved in order to
determine all elementary interactions with the environment that are induced by any of the
processes.
Generally, inventory input data can be derived in two ways: the bottom-up approach is based
on technology-specific data; it is also called process chain analysis. In the top-down
approach, sector-wide indicators (such as total energy use) and input-output tables (that
describe the interaction of sectors in a national economy) are used to generate more generic
data, like average emission factor.

– 10 – TR 62422 © IEC:2007(E)
A widely accepted practice is to rely on the bottom-up procedure wherever possible and to
use top-down data only to cover data gaps or for verification purposes.
Although the inventory looks at first sight like a mere accounting procedure that contains no
methodological problems, it is a complex task. The analyst's choice of methodology or his
approach to close wide data gaps can have a significant influence on the final result of the
study.
This TR aims to increase the availability of specific data and therefore to reduce the
contribution and the uncertainty introduced in performance evaluation by the use of generic
top-down data.
4.4 Impact assessment
In this phase of the analysis for any included process, many different elementary interactions
with the environment such as emissions to air, water, and soil, or the use of resources have to
be listed. Interactions need to be grouped together (e.g. by means of impact classification and
characterization) to make this problem tractable.
The number and type of impacts included depends on the goal of the study, the anticipated
relevance of each impact class for the system analyzed, data availability, and other factors
...