With over 19,000 Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) datasets in various sectors such as energy supply, construction materials, transport, biomaterials, chemicals, agriculture, wood, and waste treatment, ecoinvent is the most comprehensive, transparent, international LCI database.
In Helix and Mobius, the ecoinvent database is available to link to your products, materials, energy, and wastes to obtain the environmental impact.
Finding an appropriate dataset from the ecoinvent database is important for creating accurate environmental footprints, but can be challenging. With the tips and tricks below we hope to get you started!
Feel like you're missing information? This article builds upon the following article, check it out if you want to learn more:
On searching for datasets: How to: Add impact to your model using datasets
How to interpret the structure of ecoinvent datasets?
Figure 1 depicts what ecoinvent dataset search results currently look like in Mobius. The structure is similar in Helix.
Figure 1: Ecoinvent dataset search results in Mobius.
The structure of each dataset contains the following information:
Activity or Process name | Product (Output) name | Cutoff, U |
Region | Amount unit and property | Database name and version |
By clicking 'More information', you can open a dataset to view some additional details. For instance, it tells you what category the dataset is part of, and gives you the original description ecoinvent provides for the respective dataset.
Process name
When selecting a product from the database always check if the product is produced by the correct process that is relevant for you. In the example above, the product “foam glass” is the same in all three datasets, but the process of producing it is different. The first dataset comes from a market activity, the second dataset does not use glass cullet to produce the foam glass, whilst the third dataset does contain glass cullet.
Market
A market dataset collects all activities with the same dataset product in a certain geographical region. Furthermore, it includes average transports of that product within the geography, as well as inputs of the product itself to cover any representative losses. In other words, they are consumption mixes of a certain product in a certain geographical region. There are either global or local markets, depending on real-life conditions and the availability of local transforming activities for specific products. More about ecoinvent markets here.
Location
The geographical region is important in choosing a product from the database. Make use of regional datasets that closely resemble the production location of your product. If your specific country is not available, you can try a neighboring country or the continent. Sometimes you will need to make use of datasets from the Global, or Rest-of-World regions.
List of available ecoinvent datasets
A complete list of all datasets activities and products can be found here, ecoinvent activity overview. The page provides an overview of the entire ecoinvent database, as well as the covered activities and products.
Some recommended datasets to use in The Netherlands
Based on the Dutch NMD Bepalingsmethode v1.1
Electricity | market for electricity, low voltage | electricity, low voltage | Cutoff, U Region: Netherlands |
Natural gas, burned in industrial furnace (31,7 MJ/m3) | heat production, natural gas, at industrial furnace >100kW | heat, district or industrial, natural gas | Cutoff, U Region: Europe without Switzerland |
Diesel, burned in building machine (35,8 MJ/liter) | diesel, burned in building machine | diesel, burned in building machine | Cutoff, U Region: Global |
Tapwater | market for tap water | tap water | Cutoff, U Region: Europe |
Transport by lorry | market for transport, freight, lorry, unspecified | transport, freight, lorry, unspecified | Cutoff, U Region: Europe |
Transport by barge | market for transport, freight, inland waterways, barge | transport, freight, inland waterways, barge | Cutoff, U Region: Europe |
Transport by transoceanic ship | market for transport, freight, sea, transoceanic ship | transport, freight, sea, transoceanic ship | Cutoff, U Region: Global |
System models
All system models are based on the same underlying data of real-world processes, but your LCA model may benefit from different underlying modeling choices.
In Mobius and Helix, the recommended and widely used “Allocation, cut-off by classification” system model is available. This system model, in short, is based on the Recycled Content, or cut-off, approach.
The underlying methodology is that a producer is fully responsible for the disposal of their generated waste streams and that they do not receive any credit for the provision of any recyclable materials.
The cut-off system model has, broadly speaking, the effect that recyclable materials are 'cut-off' at the beginning of the treatment processes, becoming available burden-free for following, subsequent uses. The treatment of generated waste streams is completely allocated to the waste producer, all valuable by-products of waste treatment are cut off in the waste treatment, and become available burden-free in the next life cycle. Ordinary by-products are handled by allocating them between the products if an activity produces more than one of them.