Addition of a new impact category to the IPCC 2021 AR6 method

Recently, GreenDelta released a new version (2.1.3) of the openLCA Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) method package. This LCIA method package version included a new Impact Method: the “IPCC 2021 AR6”, implemented based on the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) published by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Now, the method package 2.1.3 has been updated by our team. The main difference is the inclusion of a new impact category in the IPCC 2021 AR6 method (Figure 1). The new impact category is also used to calculate Global Warming Potential 100 (GWP 100) considering only components mentioned by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)/ Kyoto Protocol. Namely, only nitrogen trifluoride, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, and sulphur hexafluoride are included.

Figure 1 – updated LCIA method package (2.1.3)

Therefore, this new impact category aims to facilitate the calculation of results compliant with the Kyoto Protocol and the GHG Protocol Standard: https://ghgprotocol.org/corporate-standard#:~:text=The%20standard%20covers%20the%20accounting,and%20nitrogen%20trifluoride%20(NF3) .

Other changes

Additionally, some flows and their characterization factors missing in the previous versions of the other impact categories part of this method were included. The flows are:

• “3,3,4,4,5,5,6,6,6-nonafluorohex-1-ene”,
• “3,3,4,4,5,5,6,6,7,7,8,8,8-tridecafluorooct-1-ene”,
• “3,3,4,4,5,5,6,6,7,7,8,8,9,9,10,10,10-heptadecafluorodec-1-ene”, and
• “PFC-1114”.

As these flows were created just for the method implementation, they don’t affect the results calculated with the previous version of the IPCC 2021 impact assessment method released by GreenDelta.

How to obtain the new method?

These changes have been implemented to the newest openLCA LCIA method package, version 2.1.3, found in Nexus donwloads page:

Alternatively you can download the JSON-LD file containing only the IPCC 2021 AR6 method with the new category, and import it into openLCA. As shown in the picture below, the file can be found in openLCA Nexus, LCIA Method Package: