November 3, 2026

QTL publishes verified carbon footprint for OPTI linear LED fixtures, its seventh family with a product-specific EPD

Third-party verified Environmental Product Declaration gives architects and lighting designers life-cycle data they can use directly in LEED documentation and project carbon models. Seven QTL fixture families now carry product-specific EPDs.

MILFORD, CT — QTL today published an independently verified Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) for OPTI, its aluminum linear LED fixture family. The declaration measures OPTI's environmental impact from raw materials and U.S. manufacturing through years of operation and eventual disposal. OPTI is the seventh QTL fixture family to earn a product-specific EPD, joining VERS, Q-CAP, PERI, ESSENTIALS, BOOM, and MICRO 5.

An EPD is a product's independently verified environmental record. Developed under international ISO standards and checked by a third-party verifier, it reports a product's greenhouse gas emissions, energy and water use, and waste generation across its entire life cycle in a standardized format any project team can read. That matters because owners and design teams are increasingly expected to account for the carbon embodied in everything that goes into a building, and an EPD gives them documentation they can put straight into LEED Building Product Disclosure and Optimization credit submissions, whole-building life-cycle assessments, and owner sustainability reporting.

"Architects and lighting designers are being asked to account for the carbon in every product they put into a building, and lighting has been one of the harder categories to answer for, because product-specific data has been limited," said Gean Tremaine, President and CEO of QTL. "We decided to fix that for our own products: measure them, have an independent verifier check the work, and publish the results one fixture family at a time. These numbers come from our own U.S. factory data, not an industry average, so a designer can drop them into a carbon model and stand behind them in front of a client."

OPTI's EPD (registration no. QTRN-00006-V01.01-EN) was independently verified under the PEP ecopassport^® program in compliance with ISO 14025 and is based on QTL's own U.S. manufacturing data. Measured against the EPD's functional unit of 1,000 lumens delivered over 35,000 hours, OPTI's total life-cycle global warming potential is 309 kg CO2e, of which about 97 percent is attributable to the electricity the fixture consumes in operation. The remaining 3 percent is spread across manufacturing, distribution, installation, and end of life.

"The data also tells designers where the real lever is," Tremaine added. "Roughly 97 percent of OPTI's lifetime footprint is the electricity it uses, so the decisions that matter most on a project are sizing the output correctly, choosing the right optic, and specifying controls. We want specifiers to see that clearly, because it changes how you design, not just what you document."

OPTI is an aluminum linear fixture available in satin, black, and white, with concealed surface-mount and recessed options and a range of Lambertian and optical lens choices. In addition to its EPD, OPTI is Declare Red List Approved and RoHS compliant, giving project teams material-ingredient transparency alongside the life-cycle data.

QTL expects to publish product-specific EPDs for two to three additional fixture families in 2027 as it continues to extend verified environmental data across its portfolio. EPDs for all seven fixture families are available at qtl.lighting/products/epd-certified-led-lighting.