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You spend three weeks writing a competitive public tender response, where the stakes are high, and there's no room for error. The AV-over-IP architecture is clean. The acoustic design is solid. The price is competitive. Then the sustainability section goes in — four paragraphs of intent, a reference to your company's ISO 14001 certificate, and a sentence about your recycling policy. The buyer scores it. You find out what you scored when the award notice lands, and your name is not on it.

This scenario is already happening. European public tenders above certain thresholds must award on the Most Economically Advantageous Tender criteria, and AV sustainability procurement is now a scored category — not a narrative section that receives a polite nod. The buyer wants product-level data they can verify, compare, and defend to an auditor. Company ESG statements do not translate to product scores. An ISO 14001 certificate proves you have an environmental management system. It does not tell the buyer what the lifecycle carbon footprint of the codec you are specifying actually is.

Most Pro AV products cannot supply that figure. That is the problem this article is about.

What the scoring sheet actually demands

The Dutch government's IWR 2023 ICT procurement framework — covering contracts worth hundreds of millions of euros — now requires CO₂ footprints and lifecycle assessment calculations for all products. The lifecycle carbon figure goes directly into the tender evaluation. When verified data is missing, scorers apply pessimistic default assumptions. That means starting with the worst possible score in your category before a single line of your technical response is read.

That is one national framework. The EU's Green Public Procurement guidance is voluntary at the EU level, but deeply embedded in tender documents across Germany, the Nordics, and UK public sector contracts. Technical specifications may require verified low-carbon products. Award criteria score lower embodied carbon per declared unit. Contract clauses can require take-back schemes and documented end-of-life procedures.

The tool buyers use to verify all of this is the Environmental Product Declaration — an EPD. An EPD is a third-party verified document based on a full lifecycle assessment, quantifying a product's environmental impact from raw material extraction through manufacturing, usage, , and end-of-life disposal. It follows ISO 14025 and is built on Product Category Rules that define how the assessment must be conducted for a specific product type. EPDs are publicly available, comparable within a category, and auditable. They are what "sustainability proof" means in scored procurement.

AVIXA's sustainability best practices guidance for AV consultants already identifies responsible product selection and lifecycle documentation as core professional obligations. The procurement market is now enforcing that standard with scoring mechanisms that determine whether you win or  lose.

Why Pro AV has a data problem

Construction materials have had a mature EPD ecosystem for years. Steel, timber, concrete, glass — these sectors have established Product Category Rules, multiple programme operators, and thousands of registered EPDs that buyers can compare directly. Pro AV does not.

There are no widely adopted Product Category Rules for AV-over-IP endpoints, room processors, audio DSPs, or installed signal distribution systems. Most AV manufacturers publish sustainability reports at the company level. Very few have product-level EPDs for their core professional product lines. The manufacturers that do — mainly the largest display and projector brands. Instead, they focus on consumer-adjacent categories, not the specialised installed hardware that makes up most Pro AV bills of materials.

When you build a bid, and the tender requires product carbon data, you go back to your suppliers. Many cannot give you verified lifecycle numbers. Some will send a sustainability brochure. Some will point to energy efficiency data — relevant to operating emissions, irrelevant to embodied carbon. Some will have no data. You submit what you have. The scorer applies defaults to the gaps. You lose points unnecessarily.This gap is visible across the AV industry. 

The sector has made genuine progress on energy efficiency, modular design, and e-waste programmes. The documentation discipline that procurement now demands is a different problem. The underlying data exists somewhere in most supply chains but is fragmented, unverified, and not in a format a public buyer can score.

Your client's Scope 3 report reaches back to you

The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, in force for large EU companies from the financial year 2024, requires Scope 3 emissions reporting — which includes purchased goods and services. AV systems are purchased goods. That puts the lifecycle carbon embedded in your install list on your client's sustainability reporting agenda, whether either of you is ready for it or not.

What follows is a data request chain. The client's sustainability team asks their AV estate manager for product carbon data. The estate manager contacts the integrator. The integrator contacts the manufacturer. If no EPDs exist, the chain dead-ends, and the client fills the gap with estimates or omits the category entirely.

The AV installation you completed in 2023 may generate a sustainability data request in 2026 that you cannot satisfy . For integrators managing long-term relationships in corporate real estate, higher education, or public sector estates, this pressure is already arriving. As CSRD supply chain obligations work down to mid-sized companies over the next few years, it will arrive for everyone else too.

The Digital Product Passport is already on the clock

The Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation — ESPR — entered force in July 2024. It introduces the Digital Product Passport: a structured, machine-readable record linked to a physical product via QR code or RFID that carries lifecycle, sustainability, and compliance data across the product's full lifespan.

Electronics and AV systems are in scope. The ESPR Working Plan 2025–2030, adopted in April 2025, confirmed displays among the first product categories to face delegated acts, with requirements starting in 2026. Professional-use electronics — including AV systems and event technology — are explicitly identified. The EU's central DPP registry opens in July 2026. That is not a planning horizon. It is a delivery date.

What the DPP requires goes well beyond an energy label. It covers material origin, embodied carbon, recycled content, repairability data, end-of-life instructions, and durability information — all machine-readable, all attached to the specific product at purchase. Products without a DPP face market access barriers from 2026 onwards. Products with an incomplete DPP data score poorly in procurement systems that use it as an evaluation input.

The gap between now and when this lands on a display specification is shorter than most screen refresh cycles. If you are specifying commercial displays, media players, or rack hardware for a deployment finishing in late 2026 or into 2027, those products need a confirmed DPP roadmap. Asking the manufacturer now is not forward planning. It is overdue.

AVIXA's guidance on designing for greener digital signage addresses the operational side of this — power management, component selection, and lifecycle planning. The DPP layer adds a data obligation on top of those engineering choices. You need both.

What to change before the next tender

Manufacturer selection criteria come first. Add three questions to your standard vendor assessment: Does this manufacturer have published EPDs for the product lines I am specifying? Do they commit to sustainability and security updates for a defined support period? Do they have a confirmed DPP roadmap with a stated timeline? A product that cannot answer two of those three carries a procurement risk that the unit price does not reflect.

Bid documentation is the second change, and the less obvious one. A sustainability-ready AV bid is not a product selection exercise — it is a documentation exercise. Your sustainability section needs whatever verified data your manufacturers can supply, stated clearly and with source attribution. Where data is absent, name the gap. A buyer who receives an honest statement of available data and known limitations scores it better than polished language with nothing behind it.

Client conversation sequencing is the third. Do not wait for the tender to surface the sustainability data question. Raise it at project inception. If the client is a large organisation under CSRD obligations, the question is coming regardless. Getting in front of it means you are the integrator who understands the full project picture, not the one scrambling at the submission stage.

For projects in German federal or state procurement, Nordic government frameworks, or UK central government contracts, build a sustainability data pack as a standard deliverable alongside the commissioning pack and asset register. It will not be required on every project. When it is required, you will not be scrambling.

My Verdict

You are not losing these bids because your products are unsustainable. You are losing because you cannot prove they are not — and in scored procurement, that distinction does not exist. The buyer applies defaults and moves on.

Start with your most specified product lines. Ask each manufacturer for an EPD. If they do not have one, ask when it will be available. If they cannot say that information belongs in your product selection rationale now, because it will belong in a client's procurement scorecard soon. The DPP registry opens in July 2026. CSRD Scope 3 chains are already generating data requests that integrators cannot fulfill.

The integrators who treat sustainability documentation as a delivery discipline — something you price, scope, and produce alongside the commissioning pack — will outperform the ones who treat it as a compliance exercise to handle later. The window to move first is narrow, and it closes with the next tender cycle. 

Photo credit: Getty Images/Jacob Wackerhausen