GEMIS - Life Cycle Associates

GEMIS

GEMIS is the acronym for Global Emission Model for Integrated Systems and was developed as a tool for the comparative assessment of environmental effects of energy by Öko-Institut , Germany .

GEMIS 4.4 (Release May 2007) is a full life-cycle/material flow analysis model with integrated database; the model covers direct and indirect flows, construction/decommissioning, energy flows (fossil, nuclear, renewable), materials (metals, minerals, food, plastics…), and transport services (person and freight), as well as recycling and waste treatment. Also, monetary IO tables can be included for hybrid modelling. Environmental indicators are air emissions (SO2, NOx, particulates, HCl, HF, H2S, NH3, CO, NMVOC), greenhouse gases (CO2, CH4, N2O, other gases), liquid effluents (AOX, BOD, COD, N, P, inorganic salts), solid wastes (ashes, overburden, process residues), land use, and resource use (primary energy and primary material demands). In addition, costs and labour impacts (direct and indirect) are calculated.

The model can perform complete life-cycle computations for a variety of emissions, and can determine the resource use (CER- Cumulated Energy Requirement, CEC- Cumulative Energy Consumption, CMR- Cumulated Material Requirement, land use).

The GEMIS database covers all EU-27 countries for energy plus AU, CA, NO, RU , US , and various developing countries (BR, CN , IN , MA, MX, ZA). Material conversion processes are based on EU data, with regional differentiation for extraction (AU, CA, RU, ZA), and processing (e.g. for aluminium, steel). Transport processes are based on EU and US data, with special processes for developing countries. Currently, about 10,000 data entries exist in the process database, and some 1,000 products (especially energy carriers with ultimate analysis, and costs).

GEMIS allows also to assess the results of environmental and cost analyses: by aggregation of emissions into so-called CO2 equivalents, SO2 equivalents, and tropospheric ozone precursor potential (TOPP), and by a calculation of external costs.