Location: IAI Area, Asia, without China and GCC - IAI Area, Asia, without China and GCC
This is a dataset used to create an aluminium industry specific electricity market for 'aluminium production Area 4/5' (Asia without China). The production volume represents the total amount of hydroelectricity used in the region for aluminium production (electrolysis and ingot casting). The dataset also identifies the technology and country providing the hydroelectricity in the region.
Electricity markets specific to the aluminium-industry are needed in an LCI database because primary aluminium production is very energy intensive, and hence the location of production plants is often determined by access to large amounts of cheap electricity, which often results in an electricity mix that is different from the general grid mix of the countries where the production plants are located.
It is assumed that the production of electricity in general and in aluminium industry specific power plants is identical. Details on actual electricity generation with each technology can be found in the corresponding datasets.
The share of hydroelectricity produced by the different technologies (reservoir, run-of-river, pumped storage) is calculated using both (1) estimates of the share of hydroelectricity coming from each country within Area 4/5 (using country-specific aluminium production volumes, supplied by the International Aluminium Institute, and International Energy Agency data on electricity sources within each country) and (2) ecoinvent v3.2 country-specific split of hydroelectricity into different technologies for IN, ID, JP MY, IR and TR. For countries whose electricity production is not modelled in ecoinvent (AZ, KZ and TJ), hydroelectricity is assumed to be produced in non-alpine reservoir hydroelectric plants.
Calculations are detailed in the report 'Calculating grid mixes for the aluminium industry in ecoinvent v3', available on the ecoinvent website.
Undefined unit processes (UPRs) are the unlinked, multi-product activity datasets that form the basis for all of the system models available in the ecoinvent database. This is the way the datasets are obtained and entered into the database by the data providers. These activity datasets are useful for investigating the environmental impacts of a specific activity (gate-to-gate), without regard to its upstream or downstream impacts.