Ecoinvent 3.11 and Plastics in OpenLCA

Question

I bought the ecoinvent 3.11 database from Nexus site (OpenLCA) but I think there is some error in the data. First of all, when I perform calculations on plastic materials I find myself with data that, with the same processes and functional unit, are also 70% less emission intensive than the same ones but with ecoinvent 3.10 (using IPCC or EF methods for example).

Furthermore, as far as electricity is concerned, the process "electricity, from municipal waste incineration to generic market for electricity, medium voltage | electricity, medium voltage | Cutoff, S" always gives 0 as a result in every eco-indicator and with every calculation method...

WHY??

Answer 1

You already sent a mail to us which will be answered.

Please ask this question to ecoinvent and please read first about the cutoff system model by ecoinvent. Your mentioned process "electricity, from municipal waste incineration to generic market for electricity, medium voltage" will always be zero in the cutoff system model. Also if you look inside that process you will see that it is empty (on purpose by ecoinvent). This process represents electricity from incineration that comes burden-free in the cutoff system model and is modeled by ecoinent as an empty process (so that no burdens are assigned).

Your first remark should be also asked to ecoinvent. Of course there will be always differences from one version to another (sometimes positive and sometimes negative) but usually, the newer version will be more precise or correct than the older version. You can simply compare the unit process in 3.10 and 3.11 and see the differences that they made. Otherwise, please also read the ecoinvent report of changes for details. They document changes quite extensively.

PS: We are not creating the data sets.