Comparison of ships' environmental footprint: Life cycle assessment applied to ship construction and operation

The contents of the presentation include: Principles of life cycle assessment (LCA), LCA applied to shipbuilding and LCA applied to ship operation. The presentation is based on two ongoing projects. In ship construction phase, VTT's LCA software KCL-ECO was utilised to calculate emissions from a case study ship (ropax). The quantitative results will give information for the shipyard to improve environmental performance of the shipbuilding process. In ship operation phase, the case study ship was a construction and intervention vessel for the Arctic operations. The emissions to air were calculated and the impact assessment concerning global warming and acidification potential studied. The intention was to compare two engine and fuel options: diesel engines with low sulphur marine diesel oil (MDO) and dual fuel engines with MDO and LNG (liquefied natural gas).