Data sets

LIFE CYCLE INVENTORY DATASETS

The need for New Zealand specific Inventory datasets has been recognised by LCA researchers and practitioners in New Zealand. The Life Cycle Association of New Zealand (LCANZ) published a report in May 2011 in which it recommended use of the ILCD dataset format for such datasets.

A project was subsequently undertaken by the New Zealand Life Cycle Management Centre to develop greenhouse gas inventory datasets for five activities in New Zealand: electricity generation, fertilisers, pesticides, coolstore operations and use of diesel in agricultural operations. This project was funded by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, and Zespri International. On this site you can access copies of the final reports and the datasets themselves that were produced during this project.  See the list on the right for access to these datasets and their accompanying reports

It should be noted that:

• The datasets are compatible with the ILCD data format but may not necessarily meet all the requirements of the ILCD Handbook with respect to format.
• These datasets were compiled for greenhouse gas emissions associated with the activities. Thus they are not full Life Cycle Assessment Inventory datasets.
• In some cases the data are specific to kiwifruit cultivation; where applicable, this is made clear in the associated reports.
• As the datasets were compiled using different software systems, and converted into ILCD format, there may be more than one entry for each type of input or output on the “Inputs and Outputs” sheet in the dataset. For example, “carbon dioxide, fossil” may be listed several times with different quantities against each entry. The total “carbon dioxide, fossil” emissions are therefore the cumulative total of all these entries.

For those who are interested, a large number of other ILCD datasets are available free of charge from the European Reference Life Cycle Database (ELCD) project by clicking here.