Improved Supply Chain Representation
As with every release, the existing supply chains in the database were thoroughly reviewed in order to reflect the current reality of global and regional product flows. As a result, links between demanding and supplying activities have been updated, and new, regional market datasets have been introduced. Read more about the Ecoinvent v3.10.
Ecoinvent 3.10 data updates:
Summary of the sector highlights (for more detailed highlights, visit ecoinvent's official release notes):
New data on crop production for Australia, United States, and Europe, as well as revised fertilizers' input data for lentil and pea production in Canada.
New data for Tunisia, Ecuador, updates to the Swiss market database.
Includes better data representation of essential chemical precursors (European data provided by Plastics Europe), technological and geographical coverage expansion for some chemicals (data for China, United States, and Europe).
Comprehensive content update on this sector including better inventory completeness.
Electricity market mixes updated to 2019/2020 (and in some cases to 2021). Better documentation and new datasets on the production of a small-scale wind power plant.
New datasets related to bamboo production in Ecuador.
Significant geographical coverage expansion for the Oil and Gas sector (increase in geographies from 27 to 41 geographies).
Global coverage of the production of crude petroleum oil increased to 96% and natural gas output to 98%.
Small expansion in data coverage and updated prices of rare earth oxides.
Three new datasets related to beverage carton production, and updates to corrugated board production datasets in Europe.
Second major overhaul of the waste sector, with more than 450 solid waste treatment datasets disaggregated.
In addition to these sectorial changes, there has been a significant revision to ecoinvent's exchanges to nature: chemical names are now more accurate (such as Manganese => Manganese IV)
What this all means in Earthster:
2909 new, 624 deprecated cycles
Exchanges to nature for ecoinvent processes are more accurate (e.g. instead of "Manganese" emission/water we find "Manganese(IV)" emission/water).
Median impact difference between 3.9.1 an 3.10 cycle impacts (ReCiPe2016):
climate change: 2.5%
water use: 2.6%
damage to ecosystems: 2.8%
damage to human health: 8.5%
damage to resource availability: 1.5%
Ecoinvent cycle descriptions may now include a "Geography comment"