Fossil-free ecoinvent: A parametric model for generating defossilized life cycle databases

Imagine a society solely powered by renewable energies and without any use of fossil fuels. How would the environmental footprints of production and consumption change? Future-oriented life cycle assessment (LCA) seeks to answer this question by evaluating the environmental impacts of technologies under prospective conditions. However, available life cycle inventory databases (LCI-DBs) are reflecting contemporary conditions, and existing tools for modeling large-scale supply chain transformations lack versatility and transparency. To address this gap, we introduce ”Fossil-free ecoinvent”, a parametric and open-source tool for generating customized, partially or fully defossilized versions of ecoinvent for future-oriented LCAs. The model systematically replaces fossil-based energy and material flows in the electricity, heat, transport, and other sectors with alternatives, including renewable technologies, synthetic fuels, and electrified systems. We benchmark the resulting fossil-free LCI-DB against other databases that reflect defossilized scenarios, assess potential environmental trade-offs, and demonstrate its application through a case study on providing decent living standards.