Manufacturing Without Building New Factories: eLstar’s Approach
When a new building material or technology reaches commercial scale, the assumption is often that it requires dedicated new manufacturing infrastructure to match. For dynamic glazing, that assumption carries a real carbon cost that rarely makes it into the conversation about a product’s sustainability credentials.
The embodied carbon of new manufacturing capacity
The logic here is directly analogous to a well-established finding in construction: building new is carbon-expensive, and reusing existing infrastructure is not. Renovation and system upgrades to existing buildings typically generate 50% to 75% less embodied carbon than equivalent new construction, according to guidance from AIA California, a finding echoed by policy institutes tracking building decarbonization more broadly: retrofitting a building generally saves 50 to 75% of the embodied carbon that new construction would require, as reported by the Institute for Market Transformation.
The same underlying logic applies to manufacturing capacity, not just occupied buildings. A new production facility, whether it’s a cleanroom, a dedicated coating line, or specialized fabrication infrastructure, carries its own embodied carbon: the concrete, steel, and specialized equipment required to build it, all before a single unit of product has been manufactured. Avoiding that new-build carbon debt entirely, by designing a technology to integrate into infrastructure that already exists, is one of the more overlooked ways a product can reduce its whole life carbon footprint.
Why this matters more as embodied carbon policy tightens
This is becoming a more pointed question as regulation catches up with the embodied carbon conversation. A growing number of jurisdictions are moving to require Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) and set embodied carbon limits on construction materials and products, according to research on embodied carbon reduction strategies in facade systems. For projects in the Netherlands specifically, this sits alongside MPG (milieuprestatie gebouwen) requirements that already factor material-level environmental performance into building scoring, see RVO’s guidance on milieuprestatie gebouwen.
A product whose manufacturing footprint depends on new, purpose-built production facilities faces a growing disclosure and compliance burden as these requirements tighten. A product that integrates into a supply chain’s existing manufacturing capacity sidesteps a meaningful share of that burden, because the embodied carbon associated with building new capacity was never incurred in the first place.
How this applies to eLstar’s ELM Technology glazing
eLstar’s ELM (Electrophoretic Light Modulator) is designed as a thin insert that integrates into standard glass lamination lines using PVB or EVA interlayers, the same materials glass processors already use in conventional laminated glass production. This means no new cleanroom, no new autoclave, and no dedicated production facility separate from a processor’s existing operations. The ELM itself is made in existing LCD manufacturing facilities so no new manufacturing needs to be build. Besides that there is a massive overcapacity, so making use of those facilities is possible without existing factories needing to be expanded.
Practically, this has two consequences. First, it lowers the barrier to adoption for glass processors, since scaling up production doesn’t require the capital investment or lead time of new manufacturing infrastructure. Second, and less discussed, it means the embodied carbon associated with new manufacturing capacity, which a purpose-built production facility for a competing technology would need to account for, doesn’t need to be added to the lifecycle assessment of ELM-equipped glazing at all.
This also has practical implications for how quickly a technology can actually reach the market at scale. A technology that depends on new, purpose-built production facilities is inherently constrained by how quickly that infrastructure can be permitted, financed, and constructed, a process that can take years before a single commercial unit is produced. A technology designed to integrate into a processor’s existing line can, in principle, scale as fast as demand allows, since the rate-limiting step is adoption by processors rather than the construction of new factories. That’s a meaningful difference for a building material category where project timelines are often measured in months, not years.
What this means for specifiers
When evaluating the sustainability credentials of any building material or technology, the manufacturing footprint deserves the same scrutiny as the in-use performance. A product with excellent operational energy savings can still carry a significant embodied carbon burden if reaching commercial scale required building entirely new production infrastructure. Asking a supplier directly how their product is manufactured, and whether it depends on new or existing capacity, is a legitimate and increasingly relevant sustainability question, not just a supply chain one. For more on how embodied carbon applies to glazing materials specifically, see our related piece, “Embodied Carbon in Glazing Materials: What It Means and Why It Matters.”