We were pleased to see that roughly half of the respondents also use LCIA scores directly from ecoinvent. Additionally, the users’ wishlist corresponds well with what we have on our to do list. We are working to tackle the items on that list, but some projects will require additional time. IPCC 2021 ISO14067 and IMPACT World+ (global, not regionalized) are already in the pipeline, which hopefully will also please those who still like using IMPACT 2002+.
Furthermore, we saw that USEtox and inventory indicators are of interest. Regionalization is something that might need additional time, but we agree that this is needed. For those asking about LCC and social LCA, please refer to the ORIENTING project, which will help us develop ecoinvent to be a Life Cycle Sustainability
Assessment (LCSA)-compatible database.
We promise to keep working hard and to stay in touch with our user community. Thanks again to everyone who submitted feedback!
For any further feedback or questions about LCIA in ecoinvent, feel free to contact Thomas Sonderegger, Project Manager at ecoinvent.
What is your field of work?
Are you a life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) method developer or do you exclusively use LCIA results/scores (for example, the “global warming potential 100 years” score) or both?
How do you use the ecoinvent database?
What is the name of the software/tool you are using?
Do you generally use LCIA scores directly from the ecoinvent database or do you use software that calculates the scores or both?
If you are using software to access LCIA scores, please specify which.
What do you use the LCIA results/scores for?
Which methods implemented in ecoinvent do you currently use and/or would you like to have available?
Which “legacy” methods in ecoinvent do you currently use and/or would you like to have available?
Legacy methods are still published in the ecoinvent database but are no longer actively maintained. This means that a) if an error is reported, it will not be corrected; and b) if a new elementary exchange is added to ecoinvent, legacy methods will not be checked for a characterization factor match with the new exchange.
Unfortunately, we did not have a “None” option in the first version of the survey and not selecting any answer is not possible in Forms. Therefore, we reached out to those participants leaving their e-mail to confirm whether they actually wanted to select a method or not. This is why answers are split into without and with “None” as option.
Which methods would you like to see implemented in the ecoinvent database in the future?
| ISO 14067 | 5 |
| GLAM | 4 |
| IMPACT World+ | 4 |
| LC-IMPACT | 4 |
| AWARE | 4 |
| Biodiversity | 4 |
| Marine plastic pollution / Plastic leakage | 3 |
Some answers were not clear to us. It seems that there is some confusion about “EF” and “ILCD”. The “EF” (=Environmental Footprint) methods implemented in ecoinvent are the ILCD methods. PEF and OEF are more than the EF methods, they are assessments. CML-IA is name “CML” in ecoinvent and EDIP (we assume a typo) and IMPACT 2002+ are “legacy” methods. We don’t know what “ARD” or “LPST” stand for. Feel free to contact Thomas with clarifications.
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Have you ever consulted an ecoinvent LCIA implementation report?
How can we better support your LCIA needs? Do you have other comments and/or suggestions for the ecoinvent team?
Answers that do not refer to LCIA have been excluded.
- Add regionalisation
- Adding all different elementary flow names from the methods mappings to the synonyms of the flow, but I think you do it already; highlighting for example exact matches, cas number matches, synonyms matches and manual flow mappings in separate lists for the methods
- Anticipate new standards to implement sensitivly faster
- Better linking to documentation of a process
- By continuying your work on transparency and dataset documentation, as well as integration of new datas.
- By making sure “Documentation” part of the EcoInvent dataset provide a precise description of the perimeter of the dataset (where the activity starts, ends. Which processes are included.
- complete and transparent documentation of LCI-data to better understand the LCIA results
- Disccusion/support forum with ecoivent and/or other users
- Early exchange and provision of documents before the publication of a new ecoinvent version. Perhaps a kind of partially public ticket system with information on which questions/suggestions/errors about LCIA Methods have already been received and their processing status, e.g. whether they will be corrected in the subsequent ecoinvent version.
- easier to access updated implementation reports
- Flag the inventory flows that are not characterized in the LCIA method applied
- Implementation of life cycle cost, and social
- Implementation of most recent methods for public disclosure
- improving elementary flows linking with brightway2
- More LCI-based methods, eg, water use, land use, etc. Total waste would be good as well, as long as you can plug that in with non-elementary flows.
- Quick integration of new and relevant methods
- quicker updates and software implementation
- Show the differences of the methods.
- Targeted webinars
- Tutorials, videos about the methodologies logic
- Clear indication of external fees for users of dynamic tools using ecoinvent datapoints.
- Feel free to contact me on the EF EN 15804 method, I might have suggestion and/or report potential errors ?
- Have a better perspective on future developments
- I would appreciate if ecoinvent would make the results of this survey public.
- Implementation specific countries data
- Please specify the % of secondary materials in each material, and enable easy implementation of parameters for adjusting the %