E3database in Brief

E3database is a tool for Life-Cycle Analyses and Well-to-Wheel Analyses. It allows easy beforehand identification and comparison of all types of supply chains/ pathways be they energy, products or services.

E3database provides results on energy use, air pollutant and greenhouse gas emissions and costs of pathways. Results can be transparently compared to easily identify sensitivities.

E3database is easy to use through its graphical user interface and its full transparency of the underlying data. The user is fully flexible to use existing data or to add individual customer databases or a mix of both. Databases can be shared or published to harmonise or compare assumptions between user groups.

E3database is well structured and subdivided in a calculation tool and an input data database. The E3 algorithm intrinsically ensures correctness of the calculation, hence, the user can concentrate on the empirical aspects of modelling.

Scope of E3database

E3database is a tool for “Well-to-Wheel” analyses, i.e. a tool for "source-to-use" analyses. E3 is designed to be used for

• The calculation of energy and emission balances

• Economic analyses

• Regional analyses

• Sensitivity and stochastic analyses

Areas of application

• Modelling of energy, product or service chains

• Energy scenarios

• Certification of transportation fuels

• Certification of consumer goods

• Certification of (green) electricity

E3 features

• Graphical user interface for easy modelling of energy chains

• Full transparency of data, calculation algorithm and results

• The tool ensures the physical correctness of modelling of energy chains and the validity of calculation results

• All input data are stored in a SQL database

• Input data are structured to achieve a completely self documenting system

• The tool consists of two separate entities:
  (1) the front end for data handling and calculations and
  (2) a database containing all data

• Easy exchange of data between different applications

• Easy export of calculation results in Excel format

Scope of data

• Basic entities for modelling of chains are:

• materials, energy carriers and fuels, services

• “processes” of any kind having materials, energies and services as inputs and outputs

• Full flexibility in the modelling with regard to the aggregation level

• Energy data

• Emission data (greenhouse gas emissions, limited pollutants)

• Economic data

• Documentation of data sources within the database

• Input data from all available sources can be used

Content of data

At present, data on the following entities are available with E3database:

• Conventional power plants (fossil, nuclear)

• Renewable energies (wind power, photovoltaics, solar thermal power plants, geothermal power plants, hydropower, biomass supply, biomass power plants, biomass combined heat and power, conversion of biomass to transportation fuel)

• Supply of fossil fuels (production, transport, refineries)

• Supply of nuclear fuels

• Electrolysers, hydrogen liquefaction

• Infrastructure for transport and distribution of energies

• Production of basic materials (aluminium, lead, chrome, different sorts of steel and steel made products, cast iron, copper, platinum, silver, zinc, plastics, concrete, chemicals, etc.)

• Transportation of goods (road, rail, ship and air)

Present applications are for clients in

• Car industry
• Utilities
• Oil industry
• Gas industry and process industry
• Research institutions

E3database is a promising tool also for prospective clients in

• Commerce (logistics, food, ...)
• Consulting
• Certifying bodies

User benefits

• Better understanding of environmental impacts of businesses and products

• Identification of improvements for existing products and production processes

• Comparison with competing products

• Assessment of potential products and production processes

• Facilitate compliance with ISO 14000 family

LBST services

• Clients can use LBST expertise in joint projects

• LBST can generate proprietary data for clients

• Licensing for profit applications of E3

• E3 licence includes a basic dataset comprising public domain data

• Clients can attain access to data generated by LBST (except proprietary data generated for other clients)