Best Practice for ecoinvent Version Control and Recalculations

General
1

Hi community,

For our calculations in 2023 and 2024, we have been using ecoinvent 3.10.
Since ecoinvent 3.11 is now available — and 3.12 has already been announced — we are reflecting on how to manage version updates while maintaining trend consistency.

We would appreciate your insights on the following:

  1. For 2025 reporting, would you suggest switching to ecoinvent 3.11, or do you remain on 3.10 to ensure time-series consistency?

  2. If you switch to 3.11, do you recalculate previous years (e.g., 2023 and 2024) to maintain methodological consistency and comparability?

  3. Do you apply a formal recalculation policy (e.g., only restating when the impact is material)?

  4. How do you approach future releases (such as 3.12)?

    • Fixed annual evaluation moment?

    • A “model freeze” per reporting cycle?

    • Or always using the latest available version?

Additionally, a more technical question:

  • Do keywords / details generally remain stable across new versions, allowing existing mapping tables to be reused with only the underlying emission factor reference updated?

Experiences and best practices — especially in the context of audit, transparency, and trend analysis — would be highly appreciated.

Thanks in advance

Jelte

2

Dear Jelte, It is recommended to update to the latest versions continuously. We do it once or twice per year. The changes are typically updates to data on environmental aspects and the market mix across different regions, for example, electricity. It can have a substantial effect. Such as in ecoinvent 3.8, when data for plastics were significantly affected by updated information on flaring of natural gas in Libya, an important input for several plastics in Europe.

We always save backups to allow tracing of major changes. But you should always use the latest version.

The nomenclature is very stable.

Best regards Marcus Wendin, founder of Miljögiraff