Where do I input my CO2 emissions data into a database I made from scratch so that my calculations work?

Question

Hi,

I have never used OpenLCA before but have been tasked with conducting a life cycle analysis analysing the CO2e emissions of a proposed first-of-its-kind commercial plant. A lot of the materials are very specific, so I chose to simply create my own database rather than import one. I have inputted all my flows and built my product system, however I am unsure where to plug in the emissions data. When I watch the tutorial videos, they seem to just pick their desired flows from an imported database, build their product system, and hit 'calculate', which gives lots of nice charts analysing all sorts of things.

I have created an emissions Impact Category and I have my Product System, but when I click 'calculate' I get weird one-component charts- which is to be expected, as I know for a fact that the software does not yet know the emissions which will come from each flow. I am happy to manually input that data, I just cannot for the life of me figure out where I should be putting it so that it will be included in the calculations. The best I've come up with is that maybe I should enter it as an additional Flow Property?

I am using OpenLCA 2.0.3

Any help would be much appreciated :)

Answer 1

Hi Sarah,

welcome - maybe it is a good idea to study some of the starter youtube videos on the openLCA channel (https://www.youtube.com/@openLCA) or also the manual for openLCA (https://manuals.openlca.org/openlca/)?

Thank you,

Andreas

Comments

Well there is no difference, from the viewpoint of openLCA, whether you have a self-created database or dataset, or are importing a database or dataset generated by someone else? Maybe I am missing something?