ecoinvent v3.10

ecoinvent is back with a fresh and promising update in version 3.10. The highlight of this update is the addition of comprehensive data on new crop production in two major countries for agricultural production – Australia and the United States. For Australia, data on crops like barley grain, maize grain, oat grain, and wheat grain are now available from new regions, ensuring a more accurate representation of their agricultural landscape. In the United States, the update brings data on maize grain, sweet corn, potato, soybean, and various field operations from new states, expanding the scope of information. Beyond that, average European data (RER) for Flax production and scutching are added. Version 3.10 introduces supplementing documentation for FLAG/non-FLAG emissions, providing additional support for the agricultural sector, empowering users to better understand and assess environmental impacts related to emissions based on SBTi’s targets. Finally, version 3.10 takes a step further by enhancing the quality of data for some agricultural products, reviewing fertilizers’ input data for lentil and pea production in Canada.

The 3.10 update brings rich enhancements to the Building & Construction sector of the ecoinvent database, including a wealth of new data and several updates. We have added comprehensive information on clinker and various types of cement production for the Tunisia geographical scope, as well as their corresponding market activities. The Swiss market database has been updated, removing obsolete activities not compliant with the current production of building materials, and now shows updated figures for clinker and cement production (including Portland, CEM II/A, and CEM II/B) with their corresponding market activities. For the Ecuador region, we’ve introduced extensive datasets covering construction materials like adobe bricks, clay bricks, clinker, cement, concrete blocks, and clay roof tiles production, together with their corresponding market activities.

The Chemicals sector is updated to improve the data representation for essential chemical precursors and their derivatives, such as short-chain alkenes (ethylene, propylene, butene, and butadiene), monocyclic aromatics (benzene, toluene, and xylenes [p-, o-, mixed]), ethylene oxide, and ethylene glycol. Industry data for European conditions was provided by Plastics Europe. Additional key updates comprise of technological and geographical coverage expansion for ethylene, propylene, hydrogen, and methanol. Specifically, ecoinvent v3.10 introduces data for China, United States, and Europe.

Moreover, ecoinvent v3.10 introduces updated industry data covering the supply and demand of chlorine and sodium hydroxide, provided by Euro Chlor, diisocyanates (methylene diphenyl diisocyanate and toluene diisocyanate) and polyether polyols (short- and long-chain), provided by ISOPA.

This version also introduces data for industrial cooling supply for process streams at temperatures well below ambient, i.e., –15, –25, –45, –55, –100, and –160°C.
Finally, the Chemicals sector in ecoinvent v3.10 takes a step to a comprehensive content update. This content update focuses on nomenclature, documentation, technological relevance, inventory completeness, and harmonisation following the standard ecoinvent approach.

ecoinvent v3.10 updates the electricity market mixes to reflect the situation in 2020. In the specific cases of Brasil, China, USA, Canada, and Switzerland the electricity mixes are updated to reflect the situation in 2021. India was updated to represent the fiscal year of April 2019/March 2020. All specific cases are based national while the remaining countries are based on global statistics.

Besides additional minor corrections, harmonization efforts were performed in order to update documentation and meta information of electricity markets, transformation and import datasets.

ecoinvent v3.10 further introduces datasets on the production of a small-scale wind power plant.

The Forestry & Wood sector has been enhanced with the addition of three new datasets related to bamboo forestry, bamboo pole production, and flattened bamboo production in Ecuador. The data was provided by Empa (Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology).

The new version significantly expands the geographical coverage of the Oil and Gas sector. There are oil and gas production datasets from 41 different geographies, compared to the previous 27 in v3.9.1. This update increases the coverage to more than 96% of the global production of crude petroleum oil and more than 98% of natural gas output. By incorporating data from countries such as Australia, Oman, and Turkmenistan, which are key contributors to natural gas supply especially in Asian economies, we have greatly improved the representation of the sector.

The new release reflects the supply situation in 2021 (previously 2019).

This update expands the data coverage of the Metals sector with new and updated data. Specifically, ecoinvent v3.10 introduces data on thermal spraying (Atmospheric Plasma Spray (APS), High Velocity OxyFuel (HVOF), and Cold Spray (CS)). Prices of rare earth oxides are also updated.

The Pulp and Paper sector has been updated with three new datasets related to beverage carton production. Additionally, the corrugated board production datasets in the European region have been updated in accordance with the latest study conducted by the European Federation of Corrugated Board Manufacturers (FEFCO) and Cepi ContainerBoard (CCB).

In version 3.10, the waste sector continues to evolve by carrying on with the second phase of the sector overhaul. The updates focus on disaggregating more than 450 solid waste treatment datasets. The users are now able to see the entire supply chain of treatment activities broken down into separate datasets. All the by-products are transparently reported, emissions are properly allocated in the respective activities generating them, and local waste transport distances are added. Moreover, the geographical coverage of the sector is enhanced by adding solid waste treatment datasets in other countries.