The results of our latest CO2 footprint and life cycle analysis related to inland vessels powered with renewable technologies are now published and available to all.
There is already consensus that renewable technologies such as hydrogen and battery-based solutions provide significant improvement to the CO2 footprint of inland vessels. But there are still some questions related to the overall life cycle impact of these new technologies – what are the dominant factors in the overall CO2 footprint, and more specifically, what is the contribution of the production phase in comparison to the operational phase of inland vessels?
Milinko Godjevac (Future Proof Shipping) and Vince Evers (Dispersed) together with the Eindhoven University of Technology performed this comprehensive desktop study using our vessel FPS Maas as a test case. What did they conclude?
- The most dominant phase in the lifecycle of an inland vessel – with the highest CO2 footprint – is the operational phase.
- The CO2 emissions impact of the production phase of the fuel cells, batteries and hydrogen storage tanks is much smaller than the operational CO2 footprint of the existing vessels.
- A combination of renewable hydrogen and PEM (Proton Exchange Membrane) fuel cells provided the lowest CO2 footprint for the investigated case.
Share our learnings. Read the full findings and benefit from what we know today that we didn’t know yesterday.
Read the findings here: Life Cycle Analysis Factors
This research was supported by Interreg.
