The Swiss Federal authorities BFE, BLW and BUWAL have initiated a project to investigate life cycle inventory data for several energy products from biomass.

The project TP1 investigated the life cycle inventories of the production and use of ethanol, methanol, biogas, BTL-fuels (biomass to liquid) and plant oils. Therefore some agricultural products (grass, straw, rape seeds) are included in the analysis. The use of such fuels for different transport devices is investigated as well. Further  important bioenergy products that are imported to Switzerland are investigated in a second part of the project (TP1.b). The data for biogas production in agriculture have been updated in TP1.c.

These data complement existing datasets  in the ecoinvent database. Therefore the same methodology as in the ecoinvent 2000 project is used. The data have been published together with the ecoinvent data v2.0 in November 2007. Please refer to www.ecoinvent.org for updated information how to purchase the data. 

• Summary and contents of the report "Life cycle inventories of bioenergy". The full report is available for ecoinvent v2.0 members only
• Presentation during  the ecoevent meeting

The following partners investigate the life cycle inventory data of biofuels:

• Carbotech AG
• Chudacoff Oekoscience
• Doka Ökobilanzen, CH
• ENERS Energy Concept and LASEN
• ETHZ, Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich, Natural and Social Science Interface
• ETHZ, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich, Institute for Chemical and Bioengineering, Safety and Environmental Technology Group
• ESU-services
• INFRAS
• PSI Villigen, CH

Jungbluth N., Chudacoff M., Dauriat A., Dinkel F., Doka G., Faist Emmenegger M., Gnansounou E., Kljun N., Schleiss K., Spielmann M., Stettler C. and Sutter J. (2007) Life Cycle Inventories of Bioenergy. ecoinvent report No. 17, v2.0. ESU-services, Uster, CH (avilable as download on www.ecoinvent.org for ecoinvent v2.0 members only)