Any alternatives for providers to get emissions?

Question

For a project I am using ELCD database in which one of the flow (product flow- Cement) has a provider to link which gave results of emissions but when using other  flows like flyash( Elementary flow) there is no provider and hence resulted in zero emissions. Is it compulsory to have a provider to get emissions? Is there any alternative for this? Some YT videos suggest to give output data like CO2, NO2 etc but OpenLca is supposed to give us emissions how can we know the data of these emissions. Also i tried using other databases too like USDA, ecoinvent (which has very few flows, processes) which dont have providers for the materails i use like bitumen etc. I am working on semi flexible pavement so please suggest me how to get emissions. Also suggest any databases that i can use for semi flexible pavement.

Answer 1

The ELCD database contains mainly system processes that are not meant to be linked to other processes in the database, it is somewhat small and today really outdated; LCACommons has some asphalt processes, and also ecoinvent. You can use the dataset search in Nexus for this.

To your "provider" question: as ELCD has system processes, they are basically aggregated supply chains, so you typically will have impacts, and do not need providers. You only need to take a suitable LCIA method, which is not easy as the normal openLCA method pack does not fit. So rather use a different database.

Comments

Thanks for your quick reply. I already checked with ecoinvent but atleast cement is also not there. May be this is not the correct database i downloaded. Can you please share the link that direct me to the database (free). Also the LCA commons you have mentioned which is USDA 2019 database from openLCA nexus was already there and i tried that too but as i mentioned before, i am unable to get the emissions. Can you brief me more about how to use this database if you are saying providers are not important.

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well ecoinvent is not a free database unfortunately so I cannot share a link for a free download there.