Olympic Subsea are proud to announce a partnership with Ulstein and Rambøll to carry out the “LCAS – Life Cycle Assessment in Shipbuilding” project. This initiative focuses on developing a maritime-oriented method to evaluate the environmental impact of their new vessels throughout their entire life cycle. In this work, they are specifically looking at the two new offshore wind service vessels developed by Ulstein Design & Solutions AS, both of which are under construction at Ulstein Verft for Olympic.
Olympic Subsea’s trademark has long been to be an early adopter of innovative technology that enables safe and energy-efficient ship operations within blue energy. In this collaboration, with leading players in maritime technology, we aim to take a further step towards sustainable practices. By using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), we will gain insight into and thus the opportunity to reduce our vessels’ total environmental impact, from construction, through operation and maintenance, to recycling/recovery. This is in line with our ambition to reduce our total environmental and climate footprint.
The maritime sector is one of the most difficult to decarbonise, and the implementation of life cycle analysis in shipbuilding is crucial for assessing the environmental impact of maritime technologies and identifying alternative low-carbon and zero-carbon fuels that can contribute to reducing greenhouse gas emissions from ships in a holistic manner.
While the focus so far has been on direct emissions in the operational phase of a ship, there is increasing awareness that shipbuilding, maintenance, and end of life can also contribute significantly to a ship’s total environmental impact.
Ulstein has a holistic approach in the design process that contributes to this, together, we have considered more efficient ship operations, reduced energy consumption, use of greener energy sources and smarter use of energy on board during the development of the design solutions.
Rambøll, a partner in green transition for the professional service industry, will contribute expertise in LCA and value chain mapping in the project to contribute to decarbonisation and efficient resource use throughout the value chain.
This project not only strengthens their ability to provide our customers with accurate information about their vessels’ environmental footprint, but also sets the standard for future ships in their fleet, and in Ulstein’s ship designs.
