JOULES has well-defined goals for the reduction of emissions for ship designs in 2025 and 2050. In order to prove that these goals are met, a dedicated working group has been set up that will carry out a life-cycle performance assessment (LCPA) of the reference designs in use today in comparison with the innovative JOULES designs.
The analysis will not only concentrate on the operational phase of the ship life cycle but will also consider the production and recycling phase. For the production, LCA data will be collected for the different materials used as well as for external costs factors. The environmental impact and price of using different fuel types also plays and important role.
An LCPA tool has been developed that allows the definition, analysis, and comparison of different models by providing an easy-to-use user interface and powerful charts. The software will communicate with component databases, LCA databases and simulation tools.
Assessment will be carried out twice. The first LCPA will be performed to compare the innovative designs with the traditional solutions. In a second iteration, the actually built prototypes will be compared against state-of-the-art products but also against the theoretic results from the first round. This approach will ensure the quality of the JOULES results as well as of the LCPA models.