Primary Data: Does ecoinvent Have What It Takes?

Many conversations in our field today turn inevitably toward what seems to be the holy grail: primary data.

That data, which your supplier would magically produce when you were busy trying to understand and comply with the constraints of CSRD or SBTi. 

Let me tell you something: maybe that data is easier to obtain than you think, but not in the way you traditionally thought. 

What we differentiate as primary or secondary data is a matter of ownership. 

Consider this: when we say primary data, we are mostly talking about two things: ownership and specificity. It’s primary data because it’s owned by the supplier. It’s primary data because it’s more specific than secondary data. 

But how is it more specific?  

Primary data does on rare occasions contain more information than secondary data, but more often it simply fine-tunes some flows or fields present in secondary inventories to better tailor the results to a manufacturer’s specific situation. For example, the electricity consumed can be adjusted with the exact kWh paid on the annual bill and connected to the country-specific electricity mix; or the transport distances the different commodities traveled to the manufacturing plant can be adjusted to the exact km run between specific suppliers and the plant. 

This fine-tuning often takes place in the modeling framework that secondary databases already provide. The secondary databases build inventories that model the physical reality of a process. When done right, each flow in a secondary inventory is already the average of a cloud of data points. To turn this into a primary inventory, we simply replace that average, for selected flows, with the single data point that corresponds to the manufacturer.  

So, to make “secondary” look more like “primary,” all that needs to happen is to tweak some flows. Easy, right? 

Now, imagine this: if we increase the coverage and completeness of a database like ecoinvent, making technologies available in every region where they happen, the gap between primary and secondary is reduced even further.

Why This Matters

The pressure put on data today is serious: traceability, transparency, granularity. This is to be expected, because the sustainability decisions built on this data have higher stakes: they are business-critical.  

The ecoinvent database is one of the most widely used and trusted LCI background databases. We are transparent, with a track record of traceability and quality assurance.  

On the other hand, the scrutiny companies receive on the “primary data” they use is intense: Can it be trusted? Has it been verified? Is it traceable? 

So, remember, ecoinvent is not only there to cover for the data you need for your Scope 2 and 3 assessments but can’t possibly source. It can also provide verified blueprints for your primary data.