Deviation in the IPCC 2013 LCIA Method

Question

Hei everyone,

i currently started to use the IPCC 2013 LCIA Method included in the ecoinvent 3.3 LCIA Methods dataset.
While checking the GWP parameters for Methane, since this is of special interest for me, i found some differences between the Method i downloaded from the openLCA Nexus and the original IPCC report.

In the implemented method, the following values are included:

Fossil methane /                        Biogenic methane:
GWP100: 29.7 /        28.5 kgCO2eq/kg
GWP20: 84.6 /          83.9 kgCO2eq/kg

Whereas the values form the 5th IPCC report are as follows:

Fossil methane /                        Biogenic methane:
GWP100: 30 /           28 kgCO2eq/kg
GWP20: 85 /             84 kgCO2eq/kg

I also checked the ecoinvent changelog but couldn`t find any hint according to these changes.
Does anybody know where these differences come from? Or is this an error included in the methods?

Best regards

Comments

Did you get a reply on this? The unrounded figures used within the methods come from page 8SM-39 of https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/supplementary/WG1AR5_Ch08SM_FINAL.pdf

There is a good explanation of the issues with implementing AR5 within Ecoinvent here: http://my.umberto.de/index.php?topic=1673.0 (regarding Umberto, but exactly the same issue).

Hope that helps, and if you aren`t reading, it helps someone else!

Answer 1

Thank you for this reply and the links, they indeed explain the issue!

Comments

I didn`t got a reply until now, so thank you very much for clarifying the issue.

---

Feel free to get in touch with other AR5 related questions