Regioinvent
is a Python package for automatically connecting the ecoinvent database to BACI, a trade database.
Connecting to a trade database enables a more realistic description of average supply chains within the ecoinvent database through the introduction of consumption markets, based on international import data and production data. The result is a version of ecoinvent which almost does not rely on non-national processes such as RER, RoW or GLO.
Furthermore, since the resulting regionalized version of ecoinvent relies much less on broad regions, the regionalization
of impacts can show its full potential. Therefore, Regioinvent
also fully spatializes all relevant elementary flows
and connects these spatialized elementary flows to regionalized life cycle impact assessment methods. Currently, only
the IMPACT World+ LCIA method is available. Later on, we plan on adding ReCiPe and EF as well.
To showcase what Regioinvent
does, let's illustrate on an example: the production of diethanolamine in Sweden.
The production of diethanolamine in ecoinvent is also available for RER and RoW.
Screenshot below shows the starting point of this example: the diethanolamine production process for Europe.
After running Regioinvent
three types of processes are created.
- National production processes
Below you can see the example for the Swedish production but the code also created such production processes for many countries.
- National consumption markets
Below you can see the example for the Swedish consumption market but the code also created such consumption markets for many countries.
- A global export market
The global export market shows the biggest exporters of the commodity worldwide.
Use the three types of processes generated with Regioinvent
as follows:
- If you know where the production of your commodity occurs, select the corresponding national production process. Either for the location exactly, or, if unavailable, the RoW version which is an aggregate of all the countries not being in the biggest producers.
- If you don't know where the production of your commodity occurs, BUT you know where it was bought, rely on the consumption markets. These describe where the commodity should come from on average, given the trade of the region.
- If you don't know anything about the process, you can either use the RoW or GLO process of ecoinvent, or rely on the
global export process of
Regioinvent
as a proxy. Note however that it is an export market. It does not include the domestic production in the shares of that market.
To get started you can git clone this repository or simply download it.
You will need a few things to get started:
- Have an ecoinvent license (obviously)
- Download the BACI database that was already extracted. You can download it from here
- Install
brightway2
and have a brightway2 project with either ecoinvent3.9.1 cut-off or ecoinvent3.10 cut-off
Note that regioinvent currently only supports the ecoinvent 3.9.1/3.10 cut-off version and operates solely on brightway2 (NOT brightway2.5).
You can then follow the steps presented in the demo.ipynb Jupyter notebook.
Required python version: 3.11
Once the regionalized version of ecoinvent is created on Python, you can export it to brightway2. You will then be able to
perform your LCAs either through brightway2 or its GUI activity-browser as you would with the regular ecoinvent database.
Do note that calculations are longer with Regioinvent
(~5 to 10 minutes calculation for the first run).
There are currently no support for other LCA software, as SimaPro and openLCA are not able to support the size of the database.
- Closest available process in ecoinvent is copied and adapted for electricity, heat and waste inputs
- National consumption markets are created based on import and production data
- The national consumption markets are connected to the rest of the database
- Elementary flows are spatialized
For the detailed methodology, take a look at the Methodology.md file.
Regiopremise
(https://github.com/matthieu-str/Regiopremise) is an adaptation of regioinvent that can work with thepremise
library (https://github.com/polca/premise) and can operate with a regionalized EF3.1 version.
Contact maxime.agez@polymtl.ca
Citing the code (take the correct version): https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11836126
Citing the article: article currently in review
Citing BACI: Gaulier, G. and Zignago, S. (2010) BACI: International Trade Database at the Product-Level. The 1994-2007 Version. CEPII Working Paper, N°2010-23.