LCA databases

Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) consist usually of hundreds to thousands of processes connected with each other through material or energy flows that represent the entire life cycle of a product, from resource extraction and production to use to final disposal. 

Data aquisition and data management are therefore key for any Life Cycle Assessment

Due to the availability of comprehensive databases, the effort for the conduction of LCAs could be drastically reduced in recent years.

Below an overview over available databases (list is not exhaustive):

• ecoinvent: Swiss database that contains more than 4000 processes to different themes as transport, energy, material production, agriculture, etc., with regular updates. All processes are available as unit- and system-processes and all processes are documented in detail. ecoinvent is available for a licence fee (basic prices: single user licence 1800 Euro, Educational version 900 Euro). Licences can be acquired from us (and can be used either independently, or together with openLCA). Website: www.ecoinvent.org . Documentation reports are available on the site, for registred (also guest) users.  
• ELCD: Database of the JRC of the European Commission, contains more than 300 datasets on energy, material production, disposal and transport, is supposed to be expanded,
  http://lca.jrc.ec.europa.eu/lcainfohub/datasetArea.vm
• LCAFood: Danish database on basic food products, www.lcafood.dk
• NEEDS: Database on future energy supply systems, future material supply, and future transport services initialized by a European research project, www.needs-project.org,  http://www.isistest.com/needswebdb/search.php 
• NREL: US-American database, www.nrel.gov/lci
• ProBas: Database of the German Federal Environmental Agency, comprises data on energy, material production, tranport and disposal, different data sources and data quality, www.probas.umweltbundesamt.de

In the "Database Registry" project of the UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative (project management: Andreas Ciroth) an overview and characterization of LCA databases worldwide is developed, including a search function for datasets and the possibility for data generators to present datasets.