Environmental Cost Indicator (ECI) respectively Milieu Kosten Indicator (MKI) in openLCA?

Question

Hello Andreas,

as part of my master's thesis, I deal with the creation of a LCA as in my bachelor's thesis. However, this time I will focus on the Dutch market, which in my case is based on the Environmental Cost Indicator (ECI) (or Milieu Kosten Indicator (MKI) in Dutch).

I am aware that costs can be created for individual flows, but it is not entirely clear to me whether these are the same. The ECI is a single-score indicator expressed in Euros. It unites all relevant environmental impacts into a single score of environmental costs, representing the environmental shadow price of a product or project.

My questions to you would be:

1. Have you ever heard of the ECI or MKI? Was this the case in connection with openLCA?

2. Is it possible to calculate the MKI for a specific product with openLCA?

3. If so, how would you have to do it differently than with 'normal' LCAs?

4. Do you have any literature that could help me in this area?

I thank you in advance!

Regards,

Nell Stankewitz

Answer 1

Dear Neil,

I've come across the MKI / ECI. It is essentially a weighting method applied to selected midpoint LCIA results from ReCiPE 2013. The weighting factors are based on financial values assigned to the "damage" represented by a unit of inpact potential, I think. So you can implement it in openLCA by taking the relevant categories from ReCiPe 2013 and making a new weighting method with the appropriate factors. Those were developed by CE Delft. One CE Delft publicaiton covering the method is "Environmental Prices: Handbook EU28 version. Methods and numbers for valuation of environmental impacts" by Sander de Bruyn, Marijn Bijleveld, et al. I don't know if the shadow prices included there are the NL-specific ones or the whole-EU ones though, so you'll need to check further.

Good luck,

Chris Foster