PRé provides fact-based sustainability to its users through knowledge and software. Like ecoinvent, PRé’s history in the sustainability sector spans decades, so they understand the importance of data transparency for environmental assessments.

In this interview, Eric Mieras, Managing Director of PRé and a professional at the intersection of sustainability, technology, and professional services, explains how PRé’s partnership with ecoinvent has evolved over the last two decades. His insights include discussions on the growing value of LCA, the current necessity for transparent, high-quality data, and the adaptability of ecoinvent’s unit process data.

Eric also shares some details from PRé’s latest offering, SimaPro Synergy—a product that incorporates ecoinvent data as part of its offer to provide scalable LCA calculations, data integration, and transparent environmental metrics.

Read on to discover where PRé meets ecoinvent.

Eric, please tell us a bit about your background and what led you to the sustainability sector.

My journey started in 1990 when I studied Environmental Science at university. I have even been a student assistant teaching the course, “Interdisciplinary and Science Theoretical Aspects of Environmental Science.” I was lucky that this was the early days because I don’t think they would have let me teach this course otherwise. Afterwards, I held a wide variety of roles but in the years before joining PRé, those focused on the intersection of Sustainability, Technology and Professional Services, which also sums up what PRé is doing. My drive to change how businesses operate towards a more sustainable model has been a common factor throughout all those years.

What does your role at PRé entail?

As the Managing Director, I’m responsible for the vision and strategy of the company. To me, the company culture is an important part of that as well. In the end, it is our people who put our vision and strategy into action. I see my role as providing the fertile ground on which our people can thrive and have a positive impact.

Please describe PRé’s core activities and services, including the SimaPro software.

We see ourselves as an Intelligence company that provides LCA-based insights through knowledge, data, and software. The knowledge is our consulting team that focuses on capacity building for clients as well as methodological development and guidance. The software is, of course, SimaPro, and the data is something we do together with partners, of which ecoinvent is the most important one, so our users can build their models.

What makes Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) such a powerful tool for understanding environmental impacts, and how has the field evolved over the years?

LCA provides insights to not only report and set targets but also to improve sustainable performance and innovate products. That enables you to not only report and be compliant but also to create value by designing and producing more sustainable products. The thoroughness of LCA allows companies to truly understand what is driving the environmental impact and make decisions for lasting changes. That is why we believe that the current boom in emission-based factors will serve as a stepping stone for the LCA field in the long run. As companies start with these simpler metrics, many will soon seek deeper and more actionable insights, naturally leading them to LCA. The data transparency that LCA provides is not a nice-to-have; it is a necessity.

How was the partnership with ecoinvent established, and how does PRé use ecoinvent data?

One of the first databases we included in SimaPro in 1992 was the Swiss BUWAL (Bundesamt für Umwelt, Wald und Landschaft) eco-inventory. This was a big step ahead at the time, bringing more information together into a single database. Later on, this database became known as ecoinvent, a more professional version. Interestingly, at the time, the BUWAL inventory didn’t even include anything about CO₂ or climate change. That wasn’t a priority back then. We had to add all that by hand.

Ever since, ecoinvent has been the primary background database in SimaPro. People use it to build their own LCA models in SimaPro that provide them with the specific and transparent results they need to drive sustainable change.

Tell us about your latest software product, SimaPro Synergy, and how it integrates ecoinvent data.

Let me take one step back first. The demand for LCA has exploded over the last couple of years. That means that we cannot keep working like we have always done. With SimaPro Synergy we aim to innovate the process while experts keep full control over the data and the models in SimaPro. For this, we automate the data collection and the reporting parts of the process by tapping into the existing systems and processes of organizations to put it into the hands of the end users of the sustainability metrics. What remains is that experts can create and maintain their models in full detail. This is where the value of LCA is created, while the time-consuming parts of LCA are automated.

It is these models where ecoinvent comes in. The models are built including background datasets from ecoinvent. A great example is our collaboration with Autodesk in creating the EcoDesigner app, which uses ecoinvent datasets. By integrating Autodesk Fusion with SimaPro Synergy, the app helps product designers to easily incorporate sustainability into the design process, providing instant insights into the environmental impact of each design iteration. That’s how we see the way forward.

SimaPro Synergy aims to scale and integrate life cycle assessment into day-to-day decision-making. Please explain to our readers why it is so important to achieve this, and how can high-quality data drive more sustainable choices.

Having insights into the footprint of products available in the daily work process enables people to take this into account. In that sense, the phrase “what gets measured, gets managed” is still applicable. That is why we believe this is essential. However, if you want to do that, you need to make these insights scalable by innovating the process. If not, the expert would need to provide this on request and increasingly become the bottleneck for the sustainability metrics. Not only can this situation place considerable stress on the individual, but it may also compromise the broader value that LCA is meant to deliver.

That doesn’t mean the expert doesn’t have a role to play. Actually, the role becomes even more important as the LCA expert will safeguard the quality of the data and models that are being used for these scalable, automated calculations. Both ecoinvent and SimaPro are essential pieces of the puzzle to provide high-quality data, as well as the tools that allow companies to constantly improve the quality of their data and adapt it to their improved products and operations. Ultimately, this leads to an iterative process of continuous improvement.

Data transparency is very important to ecoinvent. Please could you share some insights on the importance of data transparency in SimaPro Craft and PRé’s thoughts on how data transparency builds trust and creates value for clients?

It is important for us as well. A few weeks back, I spoke to someone who got their footprint from a tool without knowing where it came from, how to use it, or what could be done to improve it. If you want to operationalize your sustainability strategy, you really need to know what levers to pull, and for that, transparency is key. Only if you can drill down in the value chain can you identify your hotspots. Knowing your hotspots gives clear guidance on what you can—or need—to improve. That’s one aspect.

Next to creating value, you also want to be able to review, verify, and check your data. If the data is a black box, you get a result, but you don’t know where it comes from. Only if you can look at the sources, the choices that have been made, and so on, can you trust the data. And that is key.

Lastly, the possibility to adapt a dataset to make it company- or supplier-specific is essential to make the LCA results more accurate and representative for your company. This is something you can do with the unit process data that ecoinvent provides.

Tell us about your experience working with the ecoinvent team.

The collaboration with the ecoinvent team has always been very close, from Nic as CEO to Emilia (CTO), Lucia (Database Product Manager), and many others across both organizations. Of course, a lot has changed since the time that both of our organizations were still small groups. That growth journey has also brought a lot of positives and professionalized the way of working. At the same time, the personal connection remains most important. I’m really happy that teams from both PRé and ecoinvent will participate in the Climate Classic this year, a Dutch cycling race along what would be the future coastline, as a way to fight climate change.

With growing regulatory pressure on industries to reduce their environmental impacts, how do you see the role of LCA and data integration evolving over the next five to ten years?

I think reporting is the main driver now, although it also slowed down a bit given all the recent developments, while innovation and performance will be the key drivers going forward. In the end, reporting is the result of all the actions taken by a company, and products are the levers companies can pull to become more sustainable. That is also why embedding it in the daily work is key. And once you start improving your products and processes, you want to see that reflected in the data and models that you use. LCA and data integration are both key aspects to deliver on this promise. That means that LCI data and LCA models will (have to) become more flexible and dynamic. In my opinion, that will be the big move: from static to dynamic data and models.

Is there anything else you would like our readers to know?

At PRé, we believe we can achieve more together. That is why we aim to contribute to a vibrant ecosystem of companies in this space. That mindset was also the driving factor behind the successful partnership with ecoinvent. Don’t hesitate to reach out if you want to know more. Always happy to have a chat about this when attending conferences, with a cup of coffee, or virtually. Those conversations often lead to great insights to both, and can accelerate the innovation of our beloved field!

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ORIENTING consists of seventeen companies and organizations from around Europe, including ecoinvent. The consortium’s main purpose is to integrate a life cycle approach that includes analyzing environmental, social, and economic impacts.

The ORIENTING research project aimed to develop an operational methodology for product Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA). This methodology can be applied to evaluating linear and circular product systems, and it enables practitioners to understand and manage possible trade-offs.

Beginning in 2020, seven work packages strove to achieve goals related to creating a practical tool for assessing sustainability performance in a comprehensive, consistent, and practical way.

The project outcomes enable informed business decisions and contribute to developing a level playing field–a single market–for products based on robust (i.e., transparent and verifiable) sustainability information.

Source: ORIENTING Project (2021)

Using its expertise in life cycle inventories, the data needs of life cycle-based sustainability assessments, and data and database management, ecoinvent assisted or participated in most work packages.

From ecoinvent, Database Content Lead Thomas Sonderegger contributed to the project and is listed as an author on two reports (linked below). Thomas shared the following insights on the experience:

“Being part of such a future-oriented project trying to push methodologies in sustainability assessment was a challenging, but inspiring experience. We can use our learnings to improve the ecoinvent database and advance sustainability assessment in an ORIENTING sense. The project included collaboration with many excellent, dedicated, competent, nice, and fun people. I am happy to have been part of this.”

ecoinvent led the task of creating an ontology to facilitate interoperability between information resources, databases, and simulation software within the LCSA domain. In particular, ecoinvent is proud to have been responsible for the following deliverables:

• D3.1 – Data Ontologies: Documentation of the ORIENTING LCSA Ontology (ORIONT)

This report describes the LCSA ontology developed in the ORIENTING project: “ORIONT”. The purpose of ORIONT is to structure the most important methodological and data elements (ontology classes) and their relationships.

• D3.2 – Data Specification: Specifications for a Future LCSA Data Format

This report describes data specifications for a future LCSA data format following the methodological framework developed in the ORIENTING project.

The final results of the wider project can be found on our ORIENTING project page.