ecoinvent 3.11 EN15804 library : inherent material energy (non-renewable) not characterized on PENRM and PENRE

Question

Hi,

Unless I missed something, it seems that flow "Inherent LHV of declared product and packaging (non-renewable)" is not characterized on PENRM and PENRE indicators in ecoinvent 3.11 EN15804 library.

Best regards,

Jocelyn

Comments

screenshot here: https://ask.openlca.org/?qa=blob&qa_blobid=16656472704252583151

Answer 1

Very good fine Jocelyn, thank you for this. 

The following happened: The libraries are still quite new and this was the first libraries released. Also the "custom/manual" inventory indicators that modeler should use themselves in the own foreground was also something new. Because libraries are immutable background data sets, they currently only link the characterization factors for flows that are actually used inside any of the processes. That's why some flows like "Inherent LHV of declared product and packaging (non-renewable)" did not appear in the library anymore. These flows are used nowhere, which is intentionally of course. The reason why the characterization of  "Inherent LHV of declared product and packaging (renewable)" was still inside the library is because we had this example process in the database with a EUR-flat pallet that uses this foreground modeling flow.

Any calculation results of processes are not affected, since this only affects flows that are used nowhere in the library. This will be solved in the creation of libraries by our developers.

Until then, we will upload a new library data package to Nexus that simply has an example/dummy process inside the library with the inventory indicators included, so that the characterization factor for some of these unused flows do not disappear in the library.

Best wishes,

Conrad

Comments

Thank you Conrad!
Also, can you please explain why PENRT and PERT have impact direction "Input", whereas other energy indicators (PERE, PERM, PENRE, PENRM) have impact direction "unspecified?

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Initially all impact categories have an impact direction set, that's why also PENRT and PERT have the impact direction set. And these indicators only come from the background database currently - the life cycle indicator for primary energy in the supply chain, which is similar to CED (net calorific value).

Because of the new manual/custom indicators for "Inherent LHV of declared product and packaging (renewable)" and "Inherent LHV of declared product and packaging (non-renewable)" I thought that it is a more "safe" approach to set the impact direction to "unspecified", because maybe users will not know that these indicators should be modeled in the input. Because no impact direction is set, it will not make any difference in the results, if the modeler puts these foreground indicators in the input or in the output. Because these indicators are only inventory indicators (and not real elementary flows in exchange with the environment) it does not really matter if they appear on the input or on the output from a methodology perspective, as long as the modeler is using them to simply count / to simply add up the embodied energy of certain products.

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We can also set it to input and highlight that these manual foreground indicators should always be modeled in the input, which will not change the calculations.

The one solution mentioned above is more consistent that all resource categories are marked as input direction, the other (current) solution is less prone to modeling mistakes (wrong side) for these manual foreground indicators.

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Ok clear, thank you Conrad!