mescal 1.2.4

Coupling Energy System Models with Life Cycle Assessment

In a nutshell

Purpose

mescal is a Python package for the creation and management of life-cycle inventory databases and generation of sustainability metrics derived from Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA), to be integrated Energy System Models (ESM) in order to make energy transition pathways sustainability assessment more holistic, transparent and reproducible.

mescal is a specialized package of the Brightway Software Framework, mainly relying on the bw2calc and wurst Python packages.

mescal was designed for all researchers and modellers aiming to include life-cycle assessment (LCA) in their analyses, without necessarily being LCA experts. On the other hand, mescal is also designed for LCA experts who want to integrate projections from ESM into their LCA studies.

Life-Cycle Inventory (LCI) datasets are taken from ecoinvent and possibly other sources if some of the ESM technologies are not covered in the ecoinvent database, e.g., premise additional inventories. These LCI datasets are mapped to the ESM technologies and resources. Systematic transformations are operated on LCI datasets, including regionalization, databases harmonization, double-counting removal, and life-cycle impact assessment. LCA indicators are then ready to be integrated in the ESM.

How to use mescal?

You can follow this example notebook to learn how to use mescal. It presents a real application using the EnergyScope model.

If you use mescal in a scientific publication, please cite this paper:

Souttre, M., Majeau-Bettez, G., Maréchal, F., Margni, M., 2026. mescal: a tool for coupling energy system models with life-cycle assessment. J. Ind. Ecol. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44498-026-00005-3

You can also specify the version of mescal you used in your publication, e.g., by including the DOI of the version you used, which can be found on Zenodo.

Documentation

The documentation for mescal can be found at https://mescal.readthedocs.io/en/latest/. It mainly contains set-up instructions, examples of input data files, and example notebooks on how to use mescal.

Requirements

• Python 3.10 or more
• Licence for ecoinvent 3. The ecoinvent database is not included in this package. You may also check ecoinvent's GDPR & EULA.

Installation

You can install mescal via [pip] from [PyPI]:

$ pip install mescal pypardiso

We recommend installing the optional package pypardiso to speed up matrix calculations.

Contributing

Contributions are very welcome. To learn more, see the Contributor Guide.

License

Distributed under the terms of the MIT license, mescal is free and open source software.

Issues

If you encounter any problems, please file an issue along with a detailed description.

Support

Contact [e-mail]