Version 3.12 of the ecoinvent database represents a significant update to the world’s most trusted life cycle inventory database. Designed to empower businesses, researchers, and policy-makers, our latest release expands the breadth of our data, offering new insights and enhanced accuracy for various industries. (ecoinvent statement)

Most information can be found on the ecoinvent website:

• ecoinvent 3.12 Website
• ecoinvent 3.12 Knowledge Base

Three system models of ecoinvent 3.12 are available for openLCA: Cutoff (Allocation, cut-off by classification), APOS (Allocation at the point of substitution) and Consequential (Substitution, consequential, long-term). All databases are available as unit processes (highly recommended as the default database where the whole supply chain is visible) and system processes (fully aggregated inventories with no supply chain visible). Please note that the latest version of openLCA or newer should be used with this database. On the release date of ecoinvent 3.12 in Nexus, the latest openLCA software version is 2.5.0. You can download the latest version here: openLCA Download

ecoinvent 3.12 LCIA Updates

openLCA Implementation (beyond the ecoinvent updates)

Beyond the sectorial and methods updates that directly stem from the ecoinvent Association, at GreenDelta, we also improved the implementation in openLCA for a better workflow or additional features and informations in the database. These implementations are briefly mentioned in the following.

Molar Amounts

• From the chemical equations, that are provided by ecoinvent for many flows, we calculated the molar mass and added the amount of mole (unit mol) to the flow properties of each flow.
• The reference flow property remains in kg, but with the additional molar amounts, practitioners can model chemical equations and synthesis processes directly in mole and all calculations will be automatically scaled to kg.

Life Cycle Costing

• All processes contain the ecoinvent costs inside the quantitative reference for simple life cycle costing.
• Prices by ecoinvent are given in Euro (2005).
• The conversion to Euro (2024) is implemented as an additional exchange rate.
• The conversion rate from Euro (2005) to Euro (2024) is based on the Eurostat Producer Price Index.
• The reference currency is set to Euro (2024) and can be changed any time to another reference currency.
• The 8 most traded currencies are provided by us in the database with exchange rates from the IMF in 2024.

Flow Properties

• We have now written all properties provided by ecoinvent, like the lower heating value, water content, carbon content etc. directly into the flow description field of openLCA.

Elementary Flow UUID

• Since our ecoinvent Nexus version 3.12, all elementary flows carry the original UUID (Universal Unique Identifier) that is provided by ecoinvent, which will facilitate data exchanges with other repositories or tools.
• In Version 3.11 or earlier, we always had to change some UUID numbers (ca. 3%) to our openLCA reference system. The changed UUID numbers are available on Nexus in the document section of the ecoinvent page in the file: “Elementary flows with UUID differences in v3.11 or earlier.xlsx”

There is also some implementations and optimizations by us that are the same as last year or earlier.

General

• All validation checks pass the test.
• All ecoinvent databases are available as zolca database files and as openLCA libraries.
• As an implementation test, all 26533 processes in the “Allocation, cut-off by classification” system model are calculated using EF 3.1 and give the same results as in the official ecoinvent LCIA results excel files.

Processes

• All empty recycled content cut-off processes in the Cutoff system model are sorted into a separate folder.
• All recyclables with empty provider processes in the Cutoff system model are sorted into a separate folder.
• All processes include unique sector tags like “Chemicals” or “Transport” that allow sector-specific tag results.
• All processes contain the link to the official ecoQuery results at the top of the process description.

Flow Informations

• All product and elementary flows contain the CAS number, formula, synonyms and the flow description.
• All product and elementary flows contain the CAS number as a tag for the quick search by CAS numbers.
• All existing elementary flows from ecoinvent are included in the databases.

Methods

• All 24 impact methods from the ecoinvent implementation are included.
• All 17 impact methods that omit the long-term impacts (no LT) are included.
• Every impact method has its version, documentation and characterization factor links inside the description.
• Every impact method has a link to the PDF file of the ecoinvent 3.11 LCIA report and the PDF file is directly stored inside the databases for easier access.
• Normalisation and weighting factors are added to the “EF v3.1” and “EF v3.1 no LT” ecoinvent method implementations.

Data Quality

• 2 data quality systems with uncertainty values are included in the databases to support the LCA modeller.
• 6 data quality systems that do not use uncertainties are included to support the LCA modeller.

Documentation

• Important ecoinvent manual and support files are included as PDFs inside the “Sources” of the databases.
• Links to different support topics in the ecoinvent knowledge base are included there as well.
• Links to the openLCA support websites and openLCA manuals are included under “Sources”.

Locations

• All locations are sorted into folders and harmonized with the current openLCA reference locations (the locations are mapped to the openLCA reference system).
• Location names inside “Country” or “Subdivisions” are corrected for their official ISO 3166 name if needed.
• Location codes inside “Country” or “Subdivisions” are corrected for their official ISO 3166 two-letter code.

Uncertainties

• Most ecoinvent uncertainties with normal distributions show unreasonably high coefficients of variation (please see the documentation “ecoinvent 3.12 in openLCA.pdf” for more details).
• Uncertainty values for exchanges with Gaussian distributions (less than 1% in ecoinvent 3.12) are removed.
• Only log-normal distributions for uncertainty values of exchanges are kept inside the databases (ca. 99%).
• Some log-normal uncertainties by ecoinvent show unrealistically high values for the geometric sigma.
• The threshold to cut out some erroneous and too high geometric sigma values is set to gsigma > 4. This threshold is based on the distribution of all (more than 600000) gsigma values for log-normal uncertainties.

Get ecoinvent 3.12 for openLCA