ecoinvent Version 3.6

ecoinvent v3.6 was released in September 2019. It features more than 2’200 new and 2’500 updated datasets.

Oct 27th, 2023

The new and updated datasets are related to agriculture, building and construction materials, chemicals, electricity, fishing, metals, refineries, textiles, tourism, transport, waste treatment and recycling, and water supply. As a result, the ecoinvent data landscape now includes 247 more products, new tools for agriculture and waste treatment sectors, and greatly expands its geographical coverage on numerous countries and regions not covered before, such as Brazil, Colombia, Ghana, India, Peru and South Africa. 

These many data updates and additions come as the result of the ecoinvent association’s participation in various projects and collaborations. Specifically, many of the data updates and newly available tools are the result of the association’s participation in the Sustainable Recycling Industries (SRI) project. Version 3.6 further integrates updated and disaggregated data on plastics production from PlasticsEurope. 

As we wish to ensure clarity and transparency, we openly document the changes made between the latest update and the previous version of the database. Therefore, we offer various files that document and clarify the changes that have been made with each version of the database. These include detailed the report of changes, correspondence files, as well as files that include all activities of each version. Further, we document all known issues of each version to alert database users and to support their understanding and use of the database. 

New and Updated Data

Agriculture 

Version 3.6 introduced updates in the Agriculture sector related to data on a variety of crops produced in different countries and regions. The database now includes: data on the production of sugarcane, soybean, maize, and energy wood from Eucalyptus in Brazil, regionalised per state; data on the production of mango in Brazil; data on different types of rice, cashew, aubergine, cabbage, coriander, pepper, chili and chickpea in India; and data on oranges, mandarins, maize, pear and apple in South Africa. Version 3.6 also includes updated data on animal husbandry and, specifically, cattle breeding and raising in Brazil and South Africa. Different practices now represented in the ecoinvent database are feedlot, pasture – including Pantanal, a natural region encompassing the world’s largest tropical area – and mixed practices. 

Building and Construction Materials 

The Building and Construction Materials sector was greatly updated in version 3.6 with regards to the data and geographical coverage. Specifically, the sector now incorporates new data on bulk construction materials, such as sand and gravel, gypsum, plaster, mortar, bricks, cement, clinker, concrete. At the same time, more countries are now represented, including Brazil, Peru, Colombia, South Africa and India. 

Chemicals 

Following the version 3.6 release, the ecoinvent database now accommodates new data on the production of solar salts. Additionally, updated and disaggregated data from PlasticsEurope on vinyl chloride, polyvinylchloride, polyethylene, polypropylene, purified terephthalic acid and polyethylene terephthalate, are incorporated. 

Electricity 

With version 3.6 the database includes new data on electricity production in Brazil, reflecting each of the country’s five grids, and new data on electricity generation in Argentina, Colombia, Peru and South Africa. Further, all regional electricity consumption mixes were updated. As a result, the ecoinvent database now reflects the situation in 2016 for all countries, except for Switzerland, where electricity consumption mixes have been updated to reflect the situation in 2017. 

Fishing 

Following the version 3.6 release, the database now offers new data on fish supply from Spain and Namibia and updated regional data on European fish supply. 

Metals 

The Metals sector has been updated with newly collected data on mining and processing of a number of metals in Peru, India and South Africa. Supply chains for European aluminium have also been revised to better reflect the current situation. Additionally, version 3.6 includes new metal-specific, regionalised data on the disposal of sulfidic tailings from mining and beneficiation activities in seventeen countries. 

Petroleum Refineries and Products 

With version 3.6, the Petroleum Refining sector has been greatly expanded, with new data on coal liquefaction in South Africa and 100 new datasets on the production of a wide range of refined petroleum products in India, Brazil, Colombia, Peru, South Africa and Europe. Among the products covered are diesel; low-sulfur diesel; heavy fuel oil; kerosene; light fuel oil; liquefied petroleum gas; naphtha; and unleaded petrol. 

Textiles 

The Textiles sector saw a major overhaul in version 3.6, with a large amount of regional data added on a variety of products. Much of this data came from the association’s participation in the SRI project. Further, the sector has been updated with primary data from Cotton Inc. to represent global activities. The database now offers new data on the production of an expanded range of natural and synthetic fibres, such as organic cotton, silk, linen, and polyester. Specifically, the sector now includes datasets that cover the following: production of cotton, linen, jute, kenaf, and mulberry data; silkworm rearing (sericulture); yarn manufacturing of all types of fibre; weaving and knitting of textiles; and dyeing and finishing processes. 

Tourist Accommodation 

The ecoinvent database includes, for the first time, data on a wide range of tourist accommodation types. Based on primary data collected in each country, the database now includes datasets on the construction and operation of hostels, budget hotels and luxury hotels in Brazil and Peru and upmarket hotels in Peru, as well as various consumer goods required for the operation of facilities, including furniture and electronic devices. 

Transport 

Version 3.6 introduced a substantial update of the Transport sector: fully updated datasets on sea and air transport; specific datasets for bulk and container transport, with the addition of ship types; new data on air transport of passengers and freight, bringing increased resolution of aircraft types and haul distances; and new data on freight road and rail transport in South Africa, and freight rail transport in India. 

Waste Treatment and Recycling 

With version 3.6, the Waste Treatment and Recycling sector has been enhanced with newly collected data on informal recycling practices in Ghana and India. Specifically, the sector now offers a range of new datasets on: open burning of cables, tyres and electronic appliances, such as refrigerators, to extract metals; and formal and informal recycling of plastics from e-waste in India. 

Water Supply 

The restructured Water Supply sector now covers a wider geographical range, with updates and new data in both previously examined and newly added regions. New and updated data on tap water supply are now provided for Brazil, Colombia, India, Peru and South Africa, while data on industrial water supply are now available for fourteen new geographies. Additionally, the ecoinvent database now distinguishes among three different irrigation technologies, drip, sprinkler and surface irrigation, and hosts new data on irrigation in countries not previously covered, such as Colombia, Morocco, Peru and South Africa. 

Relevant Documents and Files

Report of Changes

This report covers all changes made in the ecoinvent database between version 3.5 (2018) and version 3.6 (2019). It reflects both the database-wide changes, as well as the sector-specific changes. 

Report of Change

This automatically generated excel file provides an overview of changes made on the undefined unit process datasets between versions 3.5 and 3.6 of the ecoinvent database. The Report of Changes XLS can be found in the «Files» section of ecoQuery, the online version of the ecoinvent database version 3. It is available to licensees of the ecoinvent database. 

Correspondence File 

The correspondence file is a spreadsheet that lists all datasets in versions 3.5 and 3.6 and matches corresponding datasets between versions. 

Activity Overview for ecoinvent v3.6, Undefined 

An excel file listing all the activities and products present in the ecoinvent version 3.6 database including most of the metadata (geography, ISIC classification, activity type, technology level, product type, unit, etc.). This file also includes a list of all geographies, elementary and intermediate exchanges present in the database. 

Activity Overview for ecoinvent v3.6, APOS 

An excel file listing all the activities present in the ecoinvent version 3.6 database including metadata related specifically to the Allocation at the point of substitution. 

Activity Overview for ecoinvent v3.6, Consequential 

An excel file listing all the activities present in the database including metadata related specifically to the Substitution, consequential, long-term system model. 

Activity Overview for ecoinvent v3.6, Cut-Off 

An excel file which lists all the activities present in the database including metadata related specifically to the Allocation, cut-off by classification system model. 

LCIA Methods in ecoinvent v3.6 

List of all LCIA methods including all the impact categories as well as list of selected LCI cumulative results provided by ecoinvent. 

Known Issues

This section lists all known data errors in version 3.6 of the ecoinvent database. 

Data Issues 

• The activities “electricity voltage transformation from high to medium voltage” and “electricity voltage transformation from medium to low voltage” for the RoW geography appear in the Allocation, cut-off and APOS system model. As the RoW markets for electricity do not exist for these system models, the datasets have LCIA scores of zero and should not be used. 
•  In the Metals sector, the new elementary exchange “Holmium, in ground”, with the compartment “natural resource” and sub compartment “in ground”, was erroneously used as replacement for the old elementary exchanges that represent molybdenum that is extracted from the ground (exchanges whose names start with “Molybdenum, …” in version 3.5). For the next release, this exchange will be replaced by “Molybdenum, in ground” in the datasets that are meant to have an input of molybdenum from the ground. 
• The activity “treatment of wastewater from grass refinery, capacity 5E9l/year, RoW” is not available in the APOS system model. This does not have any impact on the scores, as the activity and the respective reference product are not used within the database. 
• The stoichiometry for the dataset “barium sulfide production” GLO (2015-2020) is incorrect. The amount of the input of “barite” should be 1.45kg. The relative emissions are therefore also incorrect. The correction will be available with the release of v3.7. 
• Five agricultural datasets were identified to have inconsistent amounts of nitrate emissions to ground water. The correct amounts are shown below. The correction will be available with the release of v3.7. 

Dataset	Unit	Previous Value	Corrected Value
maize grain production, rainfed, GLO, 2006-2013	kg/kg	0.00454	0.00505
maize grain production, rainfed, ZA, 2006-2013	kg/kg	0.00454	0.00505
maize silage production, ZA, 2014-2016	kg/kg	0.00066	0.00082
orange production, fresh grade, ZA, 2015	kg/kg	0.00242	0.00139
pear production, ZA, 2012-2016	kg/kg	0.00136	0.00102

• the dataset “propane extraction, from liquefied petroleum gas” is modelled incorrectly, the input of “liquefied petroleum gas” is incorrect. 
• The air freight transport datasets (“transport, freight, aircraft, dedicated freight, […] haul” and “transport, freight, aircraft, belly-freight, […] haul”) are updated within the release of ecoinvent v3.8 in collaboration with INFRAS, the original data provider. An updated project report (Notten P.J., Althaus H-J. and Cox B., (2021) Life cycle inventories of global air freight – Global, Update 2021. ecoinvent Association, Zürich, Switzerland) is accessible in the SRI results section of the ecoinvent website. More information can be found in the Report of Changes for version 3.8. Within the report users can find indication on how to correct the data and information on relevant changes in impact assessment. 
• In the dataset “styrene production”, the benzene emissions to water and to air are too high. With support of PlasticsEurope, it could be established that the benzene emissions to water can be removed completely from the dataset and the benzene emissions to air were decreased to 2.0E-07 kg. A corrected inventory was introduced in version 3.8 
• In November 2020, we received an update from the International Zinc Association regarding the modelling of the zinc mining dataset: The exchange amount of the input from the environment “Gold, in ground” (compartment: “natural resource”; subcompartment: “in ground”) was found to be wrong in the activity “zinc mine operation, GLO”. As this is a multi-output activity, several datasets are affected by this error in the attributional system models. The new amounts in each system model, based on corrected data supplied by the data provider, are listed in the table below. These amounts correspond to those published in version 3.7.1 of the ecoinvent database. 

System model	Reference product	Corrected exchange amount of “Gold, in ground” (kg)
Undefined	zinc concentrate	0.00000104
Allocation, APOS	bulk lead-zinc concentrate	6.86335E-07
Allocation, APOS	copper concentrate, sulfide ore	1.58859E-06
Allocation, APOS	gold, unrefined	0.040384363
Allocation, APOS	iron scrap, unsorted	2.80535E-07
Allocation, APOS	lead concentrate	7.10915E-07
Allocation, APOS	lime	2.21215E-07
Allocation, APOS	quicklime, milled, loose	1.45586E-07
Allocation, APOS	sand	7.56292E-09
Allocation, APOS	zinc concentrate	7.18478E-07
Allocation, cut-off	bulk lead-zinc concentrate	6.88443E-07
Allocation, cut-off	copper concentrate, sulfide ore	1.59347E-06
Allocation, cut-off	gold, unrefined	0.040508371
Allocation, cut-off	lead concentrate	7.13098E-07
Allocation, cut-off	lime	2.21895E-07
Allocation, cut-off	quicklime, milled, loose	1.46033E-07
Allocation, cut-off	sand	7.58615E-09
Allocation, cut-off	zinc concentrate	7.20684E-07
Consequential	zinc concentrate	0.00000104

• The two datasets: purified terephthalic acid production, GLO/RER, 2011-2017 are missing five exchanges to the environment. Among the others, the datasets should include the exchanges shown in the table below. The corrected datasets will be included in the release of 3.7. 

Type	Name	Unit	Compartment	Sub-compartment	Amount
ToEnvironment	Acetic acid	kg	air	unspecified	2.2E-05
ToEnvironment	Methane, bromo-,  Halon 1001	kg	air	unspecified	3.01E-05
ToEnvironment	Methyl formate	kg	air	unspecified	1.26E-07
ToEnvironment	Particulates,  < 2.5 um	kg	air	unspecified	3.72E-06
ToEnvironment	Particulates,  > 10 um	kg	air	unspecified	2.07E-06

• The dataset “methylene diphenyl diisocyanate production” (GLO and RER) treats the formed hydrochloric acid as a waste, this does not reflect reality. Hydrochloric acid is a valuable by-product which is used or sold by the MDI producer.The ecoinvent association advices users to either use the LCIA scores from the current ecoProfile available on the PlasticsEurope website or to correct the unit process in ecoinvent by removing the waste neutralisation and treating HCl as a by-product. 
  To correct the ecoinvent dataset, we would advise user to use the undefined dataset available through ecoQuery and remove the exchanges of the input of sodium hydroxide and the outputs of sodium and chloride. 

Consequential system model issues 

• Three elementary exchanges are found in the compartment “social”. These exchanges can be ignored, both at the unit process and the inventory level, as ecoinvent does not yet account for social impacts. 

• The modelling of the constrained market “market for fibre, silk, short” in the Consequential system model is incorrect. This issue affects solely the silk supply chain.