EuGeos database: missing EN15804 parameter(s) on secondary fuels?

Question

Hi,

We have just received the EuGeos database and I have made a quick comparison between EN15804 parameters and EuGeos. It appears that some have to be obtained indirectly but that`s not a real issue. The main issue is that there is no distinction between "Use of renewable secondary fuels (RSF; MJ net calorific value)" and "Use of non renewable secondary fuels (NRSF; MJ net calorific value)". I only find one parameter ("Use of secondary fuels (MJSF)"), that covers both renewalbe and non renewalbe, through the impact method "Material + Waste Indicators (EN15804)".

How can this issue be ressolved? Can this parameter be split in two?

kind regards,

Thomas Schaubroeck

Answer 1

Hi Thomas,
I will follow up with the data provider - as you probably are aware of, the database is not provided by us but by EuGeos.
Best
Andreas

Comments

Hi Andreas,

Thank you kind for the response!

Maybe the following information is useful. I noticed that this impact category has though two CF:
- secondary fuel (EN15804)
- renewable secondary fuel (EN15804)

The result for renewable secondary fuel can pressumably be derived from considering the "elementary flow" quantity of renewable secondary fuel (derived from the life cycle inventory) and for non-renewable I guess the substraction has to be made with secondary fuel. This approach is though not mentioned as such in EuGeos guidelines as far as I know. So it would be best to get their approval.
it should though best be grouped as separate impact categories (ideally) to make it apparent in the impact results.

regards,

thomas

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Hi Thomas,
Sorry for a short delay in replying to your query - I was on holiday last week. When we originally set up this database we prepared separate CF for renewable and non-renewable secondary fuel, as you noticed. But in ecoinvent with cut-off allocation applied, there are just two flows that are unequivocally secondary fuels and thus contribute to the indicators: blast furnace gas and energy wood.  Because of that, in practice I found it just as easy to separate the renewable from the non-renewable by ascribing both to "secondary fuel" then working with the flow contributions to the total as it was to generate separate results for RSF and NRSF (i.e. we have done in practice what you outline in your second post). Therefore we didn`t use the "renewable secondary fuel" CF in the end. I accept your feedback that it would be clearer if we did so, and the indicator values were then separated in the impact assessment result. We will do that in future versions.
Kind regards,
Chris Foster,
EuGeos Limited

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Hi Chris,

Thank you kind for the response!
So the CF "secondary fuel (EN15804") can be regarded to represent non-renewable secondary fuel? Is this correct? If this would not the case, there would be doublecounting (as both the CF "secondary fuel (EN15804)" and "renewable secondary fuel (EN15804)" would then cover renewable secondary fuels). or not?

kind regards,

Thomas

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Hi,

To add to the discussion, I cannot find the elementary flow "renewable secondary fuel (EN15804)" in LCI of processes that I use. I can though find the elementary flow "secondary fuel (EN15804)". Hence I cannot apply this procedure in practice to distinguish between renewable and non-renewable secondary fuel usage. Is this "renewable secondary fuel (EN15804)" elementary flow used by any process and how can I check this?

Regards,

Thomas

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Hi again Thomas,
As indicated previously, when we set this up we were a bit "lazy". Because there are only the 2 flows in ecoinvent that are secondary fuels (1 is wood, the other blast furnace gas), we didn`t separate them as renewable and non-renewable. We just use the process contribution analysis to separate the two. So in the example below you see that 100% of the indicator is blast-furnace gas (non-renewable).

And it is true that the "renewable secondary fuel" elementary flow is not used. Accepting that while this works it`s not ideal, we`ll make an update that will yield the Renewable and Non-Renewable Secondary Fuel indicators separately. That will also be true in a version based on ecoinvent 3.3 that we are preparing.
Thanks for your feedback about this.
Kind regards,
Chris Foster

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Hi Chris,

Thank you kind for the explanation! Looking forward to the updated version.

kind regards,

thomas

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Thank you Chris and Thomas for the interaction! As an update, the new database is meanwhile on Nexus.