It was brought up to our attention that the ELCD database was experiencing some issues regarding the impact category Resource use, fossil from the EF 3.0 (adapted) LCIA method. This impact category displayed no environmental impact even for processes where one would expect to see some impact.
Similar categories such as CML baseline – abiotic depletion (fossil fuels), Cumulative Energy Demand – non renewable, fossil, Cumulative Energy Demand (LHV) – non-renewable, fossil, EN 15804 + A2 Method – resource use, fossil, EPD (2018) – resource use, fossil, ReCiPe 2016 Midpoint (E), (H), (I) – Fossil resource scarcity could have also been affected.
The issue came from some “out of the norm” elementary flows not being taken into account by the method package. In order to fix this, the necessary flows were exchanged to flows that would be accounted for in the method package, namely:
| Conflicting flow | UUID | units | Substituting, equivalent flow | UUID | Category | units |
| brown coal; 11.9 MJ/kg | 5a70cbea-10de-477b-ba2f-c219884b39e1 | MJ | Energy, from coal, brown | 7045c96d-7cef-33cf-8f3d-cf7198b6faab | Resource/in ground | MJ |
| crude oil; 42.3 MJ/kg | 718760af-87f6-4005-be1b-b5ccb8258b32 | MJ | Energy, from oil | 65b57348-143d-3f95-9229-9c6999296d04 | Resource/in ground | MJ |
| hard coal; 26.3 MJ/kg | 9525b6c8-9996-4da5-a161-982ce8014e61 | MJ | Energy, from coal | bb7aa805-00c6-416a-9e93-4ee7b33671da | Resource/in ground | MJ |
| natural gas; 44.1 MJ/kg | c2035468-120a-459e-8415-df51576e9b4a | MJ | Energy, from gas, natural | 334b9535-0044-302f-965a-26e6167e7b60 | Resource/in ground | MJ |
| peat; 8.4 MJ/kg | 1939f8a8-d868-4eb3-9b2c-5feeda942af3 | MJ | Energy, from peat | 6a85f9e5-cf4d-34c9-92ef-dd91b5d95b95 | Resource/unspecified | MJ |
| wood; 14.7 MJ/kg | 8f8db08d-1f39-417c-b98b-643509352592 | MJ | Energy, from wood | b2e8e329-f643-3fa0-8af9-95afa9347bbd | Resource/biotic | MJ |
| biomass; 14.7 MJ/kg | aaa3f5e0-aeca-413f-ae80-f1a8a16576bf | MJ | Energy, from biomass | 5224d6af-147e-3506-b9e4-60b8eb3a9f82 | Resource/biotic | MJ |
Next steps
The issue has now been solved and the updated database is now available to download in Nexus.
For those that want to continue using ELCD database, please go to our Nexus website and download the updated version: https://nexus.openlca.org/database/ELCD