Kingspan Light + Air: where EPDs stand today

Who they are and what they sell

Kingspan Light + Air (KLA) is the daylighting and natural ventilation arm of Kingspan Group in North America. The portfolio covers three big buckets that show up on specs from K‑12 to logistics to healthcare: toplighting (unit and structural skylights, smoke and heat vents), sidelighting (translucent polycarbonate wall systems), and canopies and walkways. With Solatube now in the family, tubular daylighting devices round out the range for deep‑plan spaces.

Across those lines, KLA offers dozens of configurable SKUs per family and likely hundreds overall when sizes, glazing types, and actuation are included. It is not a single‑product “pure play”, it is a multi‑category daylighting platform.

Sustainability posture at a glance

Kingspan’s groupwide Planet Passionate program drives operations, renewables, and circularity, and KLA sites often feature on those updates. If you want the corporate view, start here: Planet Passionate. LEED v5 was ratified by USGBC members on March 28, 2025, and it keeps disclosure while pushing embodied‑carbon results to center stage (USGBC, 2025) (USGBC, 2025). For manufacturers, that makes product‑specific, externally verified Type III EPDs the practical ticket onto many material schedules. In LEED today, those EPDs still count toward the materials credit, with product‑specific Type III carrying extra weight in tallies (USGBC Credit Library, 2024).

Product coverage by EPDs

What we can see in the public domain suggests a mixed picture. Kingspan as a group publishes many EPDs, particularly for insulated metal panels and insulation made or sold in North America and Europe. Several Light + Air products published in Europe have EPDs through national operators for skylights and smoke vents, which signals internal know‑how exists on the category. In the US, visible KLA EPDs for skylights, translucent wall systems, smoke vents, or tubular devices are sparse today. If a few exist behind the scenes, they are hard to find on major operator registries or brand pages.

That gap matters commercially. LEED v4.1 and v5 frameworks reward product‑specific Type III EPDs, and teams often prefer options with ready documentation to avoid using conservative defaults that hurt project carbon accounting (USGBC Credit Library, 2024).

Likely best sellers that need EPDs first

Two families pop to the top for rapid ROI:

• Polycarbonate unit and structural skylights used across industrial, retail and education. This is a high‑volume, repeatable spec pattern.
• Translucent wall systems like UniQuad or PentaClad where architects compare thermal, impact, and diffusion performance head‑to‑head.

Start with plant‑specific product EPDs for the big movers, then extend to smoke vents and Solatube models. A staged rollout lets sales point to concrete documents quickly while engineering builds out the rest.

Competitive pressure you’ll meet on specs

Daylighting competitors frequently seen on US projects include Kalwall for translucent panels and skyroofs, VELUX Commercial for modular and metal‑framed skylight systems, and EXTECH for polycarbonate façades. Kalwall publishes UL‑verified EPDs for façades and skyroofs, which is easy for design teams to cite (Kalwall, 2022) (Kalwall, 2022). VELUX indicates its Modular Skylight Series has EPD coverage, which also shows up in bidder questions (VELUX, 2024) (VELUX, 2024). Even glass suppliers that substitute into skylight assemblies, like Guardian Glass North America, carry renewed EPDs as of 2024 that project teams know well (Guardian Glass, 2024) (Guardian Glass, 2024).

When a category has EPD‑ready alternatives, a product without one often gets sidelined. Not because it is worse, but because the paperwork friction is higher.

Picking the right PCR path is straightforward

For fenestration assemblies, a refreshed North American Product Category Rule covers skylights, windows, storefront, curtain wall, and doors. That gives a clear rulebook to generate consistent EPDs across frames and glazing in one declaration (NGA/FGIA/WDMA, 2024). A strong partner will benchmark competitors’ PCR choices first, then mirror what specifiers already accept to keep submittals smooth.

Rough scale of the opportunity

LEED’s materials credit still counts at least 20 qualifying products for Option 1 in common project types, and a product‑specific Type III EPD with external verification counts more toward that total, effectively making your SKU more “valuable” per line item (USGBC Credit Library, 2024). For brands with dozens of daylighting SKUs, converting the top sellers quickly can shift win rates in sectors where LEED targets are non‑negotiable.

What we’d prioritize this quarter

Publish plant‑specific EPDs for the highest volume skylight and translucent wall SKUs first. Use the new fenestration PCR, disclose A1 to A3 robustly, and plan updates by reference year. Parallel‑path Solatube HPD coverage with EPDs for the most specified TDD models, since many owners chase health and carbon simultaneously under v5. Keep the authoring and verification sprint tight so sales can push live declarations, not promises. And fix discoverability. If specifiers cannot find your EPDs in two clicks, they assume they do not exist.

Closing thought

KLA already builds the kind of products designers want. The last mile is paperwork that proves performance in the language LEED v5 and owner policies now expect. Do that for the few SKUs that move the most steel and polycarbonate, and you unlock outsized spec wins. It is a simple move, but teh payoff shows up fast in bid rooms.