Energy Data Production at One Click LCA

What do we mean by energy data?

One Click LCA produces all energy data required for life cycle assessment (LCA), including environmental impact data for the country-level electricity mixes, electricity grids, district heating and residual electricity.

Why do we produce energy data?

At One Click LCA, we understand that you need high-quality energy data to complete the LCA for your project at hand. We produce reliable, consistent and recent energy data to make LCA easy for you.

How do we make energy data?

The energy mix composition, i.e. the quantity of every fuel or energy source used in forming the respective energy mix, is obtained from reputable and publicly available data providers, such as IEA or eGRID.

Underlying processes and elementary flows are modelled with generally available or customised life-cycle inventory (LCI) data.

Energy data is modelled using state-of-the-art software for energy LCA and passes through a rigorous quality assurance process before publication, including automated benchmarking against existing datasets in the world’s largest construction LCA database. 

What step-by-step process do we apply?

When producing energy data at One Click LCA, we follow a rigorous four-step process to ensure quality, accuracy and transparency.

1. Sourcing upstream and quantitative data

We start by acquiring the energy mix composition from reputable and publicly available data providers. The acquired data is most often available on a national level, but in some cases more granular data is available, e.g. for individual states or grids.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) is a key source due to its global reach. Other key data sources include the Emissions & Generation Resource Integrated Database (eGRID) by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and national governments, e.g. in the Nordic countries.

IEA is a key source of data as it deals with the statistical energy data from most countries across the world on an annual basis. Further, IEA expects data to be reported in a specific, uniform format from all countries, ensuring it is a high-quality, reliable, consistent and frequently updated data source.

At One Click LCA, we are using the International Energy Agency (IEA) as the main source of obtaining quantitative data for the manufacturing of electricity and district heating. The reason for this is that the data at IEA is available for a big portion of the world's countries, and it is updated annually. The IEA has all the information necessary to produce an energy model, so we do not have to rely on the specific country’s energy statistics, since very often it happens that they don’t report data with enough granularity and details which makes using the data for energy modelling purposes very difficult. For that reason, One Click LCA relies on a uniform, singular source of data. 

Below is a screenshot of IEA's website energy statistics tables, OCLCA's primary source of data.

Figure 1: Source: IEA website, https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/data-tools/energy-statistics-data-browser?country=POLAND&energy=Electricity&year=2020

2. Modelling with energy creation software

The energy modelling process starts with selecting the appropriate fuels or energy sources from a special energy production-modified version of the upstream life-cycle inventories, then calculating the energy mixes in One Click LCA’s Energy LCA profile tool (for internal use only) and is finalised by making it available for customer use.

For the modelling, One Click LCA is using generally available life-cycle inventories for underlying processes and flows with few customisations. The first addition is that the voltage transformation burden is added to the original dataset. The transmission burdens are obtained from the IEA and World Bank and their DataBank World Development Indicators.

The second addition is that direct emissions (smokestack emissions) are added. They are a necessary part of the fuels for producing energy (electricity or district heating) but are not part of the standard EN15804 +A1/+A2 data arrays so the data is sourced and added separately. The source is the emission factors database EFDB 2020 issued based on IPCC 2006 Guidelines.

Import and export values are highlighted in Figure 1 to show that these values are not broken down in detail to provide information about what countries the energy is imported from. Without this information, it is not possible to reliably include imported/exported values in the model and One Click LCA calculates the energy (electricity and district heat) based on internal production only.

The calculations are made so the final result in One Click LCA energy models have the full array of emission factors for the impact indicators covered in the standards EN15804 +A1 and +A2, as well as any other more specific certification scheme and PCRs such as International EPD system, INIES France, and TRACI applicable for the US.

3. Review and internal verification process

The LCA data expert responsible for modelling the specific energy data in question is supported by a team of experienced peers throughout an internal quality assurance process to ensure model accuracy, rigidity and integrity.

First, the model and resulting environmental impacts are reviewed as a stand-alone case to verify calculation logic and completeness of data. The expertise of the LCA data team at One Click LCA is critical in ensuring the high quality and reliability of this manual review and verification phase.

Second, the resulting environmental impacts are benchmarked against other energy data, both from the country in question and also with source data from other calendar years and energy data for other countries. 

4. Publishing and availability

Once the review process is complete and data quality has been confirmed, the energy data is published and becomes available in the One Click LCA database. You can now find the data in our software for both design & construction and manufacturing.

In most cases, One Click LCA energy data includes environmental impact indicators as required by all regulations, standards and Green Building Councils (GBC) across the world so you can find it in most of our tools globally, subject to the specific rules applicable to the use of energy data in the tool in question.

One Click LCA energy data typically includes environmental impacts for standards EN 15804+A2, EN 15804+A1, TRACI, ISO 14040, ISO 14044 and ISO 21930. They also typically include additional indicators as required by specific Product Category Rules (PCR) and EPD programs globally, including International EPD System, INIES France, Boverket Sweden and EPD Norge.

The published energy data description provides information about the dataset and source data. It also provides transparent explanations about any assumptions or exclusions made during data creation.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Can I request One Click LCA to add energy data needed in my LCA projects?

Yes. You can contact Customer Success at One Click LCA to request the integration of new energy data that you need in your LCA projects.

Please note though that One Click LCA will evaluate and prioritise such integration based on the needs of its global customer base. You can also make the energy data integration order via your support services subscription to ensure timely delivery. This is a paid service and our team is happy to assist you with details and options.

Please also bear in mind that in any case, the expert LCA data team will need to assess if it is possible to fulfil your request, as not all requests can be completed. As explained in this article, energy data integration is constrained by the exact nature of the datasets available.

If you have a specific data you wish to use you can also add it directly to your company account via the user interface as Private data. This feature is available to all Expert licence users and the instructions how to create Private data can be found on One Click LCA Help Centre.

Why is One Click LCA energy data based on electricity mix source data that does not represent the current year?

One Click LCA gathers much of the source data for its energy data from the International Energy Agency (IEA) due to its global reach. Other key data sources include the Emissions & Generation Resource Integrated Database (eGRID) by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and national governments e.g. in the Nordic countries.

The IEA deals with the statistical energy data from countries across the world. IEA expects data to be reported in a specific, uniform format from all countries so it takes time for first national institutions and then IEA to compile and finalise all the data in question. One Click LCA typically waits until the end of each calendar year for IEA to complete the data for a new year before updating energy data for all countries globally in bulk.

As an example, energy mix data for calendar year 2022 is collected by IEA during the year 2023. It gets published towards the end of the year and is then integrated by One Click LCA so it is available at the start of 2024. 

To a lesser extent, One Click LCA is similarly dependent on the update cycles of other data sources and seeks to update such data once per calendar year.

Why doesn’t One Click LCA use energy data as reported by some national authorities directly? Why are the environmental impacts of One Click LCA energy data different to the data reported by national authorities in my country?

In some cases, we do, such as the Emissions & Generation Resource Integrated Database (eGRID) by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and national governments in the Nordic countries.

When we do not, the simple explanation is that the reported data format, calculation method and assumptions are most likely different. In some cases, the source data cannot be verified.

Many national authorities do not report data in the level of detail required to produce energy datasets with all environmental impacts required for LCA. For example, national authorities in many countries publish energy data only with Global Warming Potential (GWP) in kgCO2e/kWh of the particular energy mix. In many cases, we can integrate this data, but it will have limited usability as data with GWP only is not accepted by many tools, regulations, certifications and standards.

In addition, when reporting on energy data directly instead of via IEA, many national authorities do not report data in the same uniform format, making it impossible or difficult to use it as a basis for the creation of reliable, transparent and comparable energy datasets. In other words, the data reported by the national authorities directly does not match or is not comparable to the data they report via IEA, even though it applies to the same calendar year.

National authorities do not have legal requirements to present their energy data in a specific, uniform format so what they do is not wrong, it just makes it impossible or difficult for us to integrate the data to be used for LCA. Typical issues we face with data reported by national authorities directly include:

• The reported data is GWP only, lacking other required impact indicators
• The reported data is in kgCO2/kWh (kilograms of carbon dioxide per kilowatt-hour) whereas it should be in kgCO2e/kWh (kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent per kilowatt-hour), as required by most regulations and standards
• Direct combustion impacts of fossil fuels are excluded from the calculations
• Renewable energy is included in the data with no associated environmental impacts
• Imported and exported energy is included in the calculations