ecoinvent Forum Archive

Dear LCA community,

My research field is packaging sustainabiliy. I just modeled different packaging systems and made the impact assessment with the methods recommended by the European commission (16 PEF impact categories). I used 3 different databases (GaBi, Environmental Footprint DB + ecoinvent3.6) and compared the results.

Ecoinvent results are almost always (much) higher then GaBi results - irrespective of the investigated system, and irrespective of the assessed impact category! Especially Acidification - often +100% compared to GaBi.

I also examined electricity and transport processes. The same thing here.

Take for example 1 kWh of nuclear energy from Germany: Results for "ionising radiation" is 0,3 kBq U235-equivalents for GaBi, but for ecoinvent the result is about 0,6 kBq U235-equivalent. Thats twice as much radiation - for exactly the same technology!!!

I suppose that the modeling philosophy and system boundaries are somehow different, and that in ecoinvent the systems include much more background infrastructure, maintenance work etc than GaBi.

Has anyone made similar experiences? Do you have an explanation?

I am looking forward to your answers. Best regards, Erik

Dear Erik, 

We are aware of the differences in scores, of electricity in particular, between ecoinvent and Gabi. Unfortunately there is not much that we can say as the Gabi data is available only at the aggregate (LCI) level. This is valid also for the EF database, where the data for transport and energy were also provided by Sphera (previously Thinkstep, providers of Gabi). 

A reminder, you can consult the ecoinvent data at the undefined unit process level (i.e. before linking, meaning the determination of the supply chian, and allocation/subdivsion/substitution). The undefined unit process can be accessed on ecoQuery (if you never logged in, please see here). You can also consult the data as a linked unit process (i.e. after linking and allocation/subdivsion/substitution), LCI and LCIAs. 

Best regards, 

Lucia Valsasina, Project Manager, ecoinvent Association