A joint initiative of the ETH domain and Swiss Federal Offices.

In the last decade, several different databases for Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) have been developed in Switzerland within the ETH domain and other Swiss Federal institutions. The ETH Zurich and PSI together from 1992 to 1996 established a Life cycle inventory (LCI) database including data on current energy supply systems, on transport and waste treatment services, and on material supply (the Ökoinventare von Energiesystemen). Empa has experience in compiling LCI's for building materials, components, and construction, as well as consumer goods such as detergents, papers, information technologies and packaging. Finally, FAL has performed various LCI studies in the  agricultural sector.

Goal and Scope

The Swiss Centre for Life Cycle Inventories under the leadership of EMPA, will combine and extend these different LCI databases. The goal is a unified and generic set of LCI data of high quality, initially including the areas of energy, transportation, waste disposal, construction, chemicals, detergents, papers and agriculture, which is valid for Swiss and Western European conditions.

Consistent and coherent LCA datasets for basic processes make it easier to perform life cycle assessment studies, and increase the credibility and acceptance of the life cycle assessment results. The assured quality of the life cycle data and the user-friendly access to the database are prerequisites to establishing LCA as a reliable tool for environmental assessment that will support an Integrated Product Policy (IPP).

Organisation and Products

The core product of ecoinvent is the ecoinvent Data in its versions 1.0 and following of the Swiss life cycle assessment data. The term "ecoinvent" is also applied in four specific contexts explained below:

• ecoinvent Centre,
• ecoinvent Board,
• ecoinvent Advisory Council,
• ecoinvent Management,
• ecoinvent 2000,
• ecoinvent Database system,
• ecoinvent Data v1.1.

ecoinvent Centre: Swiss Centre for Life Cycle Inventories

The Swiss Centre for Life Cycle Inventories was founded in 2000 and currently includes institutes and departments of the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology Zürich (ETH Zurich) and Lausanne (EPFL), of the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI), Villigen, of the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research (Empa), and of the Swiss Federal Research Station for Agroecology and Agriculture (Agroscope FAL Reckenholz).

The Swiss Centre for Life Cycle Inventories funded the development and programming of the ecoinvent database and its current operation. Its members were in charge with LCI data compilation and updating within the project ecoinvent 2000.

ecoinvent Board: strategic unit of the ecoinvent Centre

The strategic steering committee of the project ecoinvent 2000 is formed by the member institutes of the Swiss Centre for Life Cycle Inventories. Chair of the ecoinvent board is Prof. Dr. A. Wokaun, PSI.

ecoinvent Advisory Council: strategic unit of the ecoinvent Centre

The ecoinvent Advisory Council is an advisory body to the ecoinvent Board with respect to the further development of the ecoinvent Database. Members of the Council will formulate wishes, expectations, and suggestions with respect to the realization of updates, the elaboration of new data sets, methodological developments, and other relevant aspects. Current members are (in alphabetical order): Norbert Egli (BUWAL), Mark Goedkoop (PRé consultants B.V.), Christoph Rentsch (BUWAL), Mark Zimmermann (BFE / Empa). It is planned to include further members step by step. 

ecoinvent Management: operational management of the ecoinvent Centre

The ecoinvent Management leads the ecoinvent Centre and its update work on the ecoinvent Database. The management consists of Dr. Rolf Frischknecht (content, lead) and Marcus Dredge (commercial issues, deputy), both working at Empa.

ecoinvent 2000: project to establish a central LCA database and to compile harmonised LCI datasets

The Swiss Centre for Life Cycle Inventories together with Swiss Federal Offices carried out the project ecoinvent 2000 in 1998. A project to establish a central, web-based LCA database (ecoinvent Database) and develop coherent individual LCI datasets (ecoinvent Data v1.1).

ecoinvent Database system: central database system for life cycle assessments

The ecoinvent database system is a dedicated software system that allows central compilation, management, calculation and access to life cycle inventory data via the Internet. The system consists of the following components:

central database: LCI data and life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) methods data are stored in the central database. The database is implemented in InterBase.
calculation algorithms: enables the calculation of LCI- and LCIA-results. Additionally, uncertainty calculations can be carried out based on monte carlo simulation.
administration tool: serves for the management and administration of the database (import and export of datasets, calculations).
editor tool: serves for the compilation and processing of ecoinvent datasets.
query tool: used by third parties for a user-friendly access to the ecoinvent database via a web-browser. It enables simple and advanced searches as well as the download of datasets. 
Data exchange is based on the EcoSpold data format, which is written in XML. An actual documentation of the format can be downloaded here.

ecoinvent data v1.1: Swiss LCA data, version 1.1

Within the project ecoinvent 2000 LCI data for a large number of products and services were compiled resulting in more than 2'500 datasets. These data with version number 1.1 reflect the production and supply situation in the year 2000. Besides quantitative information about inputs and outputs, additional describing information (meta information) is provided about technology, temporal and geographical validity and so on.

In addition to LCI data some frequently applied impact assessment methods are included and connected to the LCI data.

Registered guests have free access to the describing information of all datasets included in the database. Registered members have additionally access to the LCI raw data and results and to the LCIA results and are able to download datasets.

Financing and commissioners of the ecoinvent 2000 project

Costs of the project ecoinvent 2000 were shared by the Swiss Centre for Life Cycle Inventories and Swiss Federal Offices.

The individual projects for data compilation were funded by the Swiss Agency for the Environment, Forests and Landscape (BUWAL), the Swiss Federal Office for Energy (BFE), the Swiss Federal Office for Construction and Logistics (BBL), the Swiss Federal Roads Authority (ASTRA) and the Swiss Federal Office for Agriculture (BLW).

The database software development was funded by the Swiss Centre for Life Cycle Inventories and the salary for the project manager by Empa and the ecoinvent Centre.