For those using EN15804+A2 add-on of evoinvent v3.11, the recent releases (for unit process version 2 and system process version 3) are crucial to note, these are:
- Changed naming of GWP-GHG indicator from “Optional (EF3.1) | Global warming potential except emissions and uptake of biogenic carbon (GWP-GHG)” to “PCR 2019:14 (EF3.1) | Global warming potential except emissions and uptake of biogenic carbon (GWP-GHG)” to better highlight that this indicator comes from the PCR and not from EN 15804.
- Changed the biogenic methane factors in the GWP-GHG indicator to the same ones as fossil methane to comply with the PCR. Even though the GWP-GHG indicator follows the 0/0 approach where the biogenic methane factors differ from the fossil methane factors (as in EF 3.0 and EF 3.1 for PEF), but the PCR makes it mandatory to only set the biogenic carbon to zero for this GWP-GHG indicator.
- Removed all long-term emission factors in all impact categories / impact methods, because the EN 15804 standard demands a time horizon up to 100 years and not above. Even though the original EN 15804 method and characterization factors from JRC contain the long-term emission factors, JRC has confirmed that in the EPDs according to EN 15804 the long-term emission must not be included.
- Added the elementary flow “Manual biogenic carbon balancing” to the inventory indicators which can be used for manually balance the carbon inputs and outputs in product systems where it is not correctly balanced by in the background database. This elementary flow can be put either in the input or the output of processes and the impact categories in openLCA (with impact directions set) will automatically subtract (input) or add (output) the amount of biogenic carbon from the total results.
- Added “Inherent LHV of secondary inputs (non-renewable)” and “Inherent LHV of secondary inputs (renewable)” as elementary flows to the inventory indicators so that LCA modelers can use these flows to model the inherent energy (lower heating value) as an input from, for example, secondary materials or secondary fuels. According to the PCR, these inherent energies contribute to the primary energy indicators. The new elementary flows are added to the PENRT/PERT and the PENRM/PERM indicators with a characterization factor of 1.
Users can also not the changes alongside the releases notes when downloading the latest database version:
