Brightcon 2025, hackathon & courses in Grenoble and online

Hybrid LCA utilizes Input Output data to account for the broader range of impacts occurring due to indirect effects of the increased demand for products or services. Performing Hybrid LCA requires the use of Input Output tables stored in databases such as EXIOBASE. Specific packages for parsing the database, such as MARIO, are available; but the linkage with the LCA foreground system is not directly possible. Brightway allows to link the foreground system with the background system stored in an LCA database, such as Ecoinvent and Bonsai. However, it is not easy to link it with EXIOBASE and perform uncertainty analysis. Therefore, a library called “bamboo” was developed to support the import of Input-Output tables (specific for EXIOBASE), link them with the foreground system, and perform uncertainty analysis. It’s an open-source library available on GitHub (https://github.com/Annedrew/bamboo).

The library works with Brightway 2.5 and adapts the input output data to generate datapackages directly so that it can be used to perform static LCA. It's faster than creating the database and then structuring the matrices. In addition, it also allows adding uncertainty analysis in different ways, faster, and easier: uniform, columnwise and itemwise based on the user’s preferences and user’s inputs. The input is extracted and structured into uncertainty arrays and then passed to the datapackages, allowing Brightway to use it within uncertainty analysis.