Coming Soon: ecoinvent Version 3.11

We want to inform you of two significant issues identified in version 3.10 of the ecoinvent database, which affect certain impact assessment indicators across all system models.

• Coke Production Emissions (China and Rest-of-World): The first issue involves incorrect emissions values for two unit processes that model coke production. Emissions of “Cobalt II” and “Anthracene” are significantly overestimated, leading to inflated impact scores for indicators related to ecotoxicity, human toxicity, and human health. This affects a substantial part of the database due to the widespread use of coke in product supply chains. However, indicators outside of these specific impact categories remain unaffected.

• Brazilian Electricity Market Production Volumes: The second issue pertains to production volumes in Brazilian electricity markets, where the volumes are three orders of magnitude too small. This underestimates the contribution of Brazilian markets to the Latin American market groups (RLA), which particularly impacts biogenic climate change and climate change related to land use. Only a small number of datasets (less than 0.5%) are affected, though the impact is noticeable in RLA market groups and around ten additional datasets.

To address these issues, we will release version 3.10.1 to provide fixes for users of version 3.10. This intermediate version will be made available concurrently with version 3.11 at the beginning of November.

If you are not using ecoinvent version 3.10, your work is not affected by these two issues.

For detailed information, users can refer to the Known Issues section of the version 3.10 article on our Knowledge Base.