Ecoinvent 3.10 - Municipal incineration - states net energy production incl electricity but not in inputs or outputs

Question

The description for treatment of municipal solid waste, municipal incineration | municipal solid waste | APOS, U in FR( 09ab642c-77db-3f5f-96d1-3b59a2d550a3) says:

Net energy production: 1.39MJ/kg electric energy and 2.85MJ/kg thermal energy.

Can anyone explain why there is no electricity output in the process outputs section? Where we use incineration and it says there is a net electricity output in the description, do we still have to manually do system expansion to reflect the substitution of electricity that would have otherwise taken place? I have looked at lower levels but electricity doesn't appear on the Sankey diagram.

I have checked the Ecoinvent docs and Ecoinvent in OpenLCA seems to have faithfully reproduced it, so that doesn't seem to be the source.

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Because it is a multi-output process and the allocation is done according to the APOS system model. You will find the same process delivering "heat, for reuse in municipal waste incineration only" and anther process delivering "electricity, for reuse in municipal waste incineration only".

Comments

Thank you Conrad - super helpful.

As ISO 14044 preferences substitution, from all of the above, I deduce that I will have to credit the product system with the avoided burdens of generating electricity from the incineration of the plastic. Do you agree? I.e. this is not automatically embedded within the APOS system even though the notes suggest there is a net export?

 (And yes I had noted the process info about not being suitable for a specific waste - I was just using it as an example).