How reliable are life cycle assessments in shipping?

What is it about?

The shipping industry is feeling the heat to cut down on emissions and switch to cleaner fuels and ways of working. One key way to figure this out is by using something called Life Cycle Assessment, or LCA for short. This tool helps compare different options by looking at the bigger picture - it's not just about what comes out of the ship, but also about how the fuel is made, moved around, used on the ship, and even how the ship is built or recycled. This research takes a closer look at how Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is being used in maritime studies. To do this, we searched through publications on Scopus and Web of Science, and picked 70 articles to analyze in detail. We then checked each article against the ISO 14044 framework, which is the standard for LCA, using 13 different categories. These categories included things like what the study was trying to measure, where the study took place, where the data came from, how the results were allocated, what kind of impact the study was looking at, how sure the results were, and what the results actually meant. The review shows that maritime LCA research is growing quickly, especially around alternative fuels such as LNG, biofuels, methanol, hydrogen, ammonia, and electrification. However, methods and reporting remain inconsistent. While most studies define system boundaries and functional units, many provide limited detail on data quality, allocation choices, and uncertainty or sensitivity analysis. The overall documentation compliance score was 49%, showing substantial room for improvement. The paper wraps up by saying that looking at the life cycle of things in a maritime setting can really help us make better choices for the environment and for policy, but only if the studies that come after this one are more open, easier to compare, and cover all the bases.

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Photo by Chris Pagan on Unsplash

Photo by Chris Pagan on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Decarbonising shipping requires decisions about fuels, engines, vessels, infrastructure, regulation, and finance. These decisions are costly and long-term, so weak or incomplete environmental assessments can lead to misleading conclusions. A fuel or technology may look attractive if only onboard emissions are considered, but less favourable once upstream energy production, infrastructure, methane slip, land use, electricity mix, or end-of-life impacts are included. This review is timely because the maritime sector is now shaped by IMO greenhouse gas ambitions, the EU ETS, FuelEU Maritime, and growing investment in alternative fuels. The study shows that many maritime LCAs are useful but not yet sufficiently harmonised. In particular, limited data-quality reporting, scarce allocation justification, and weak uncertainty analysis reduce the reliability and comparability of results. By identifying these gaps, the paper helps researchers, regulators, shipowners, technology developers, and financiers understand what stronger maritime LCA practice should include. It recommends clearer reporting, wider system boundaries, better access to primary vessel data, broader environmental indicators, and stronger sensitivity analysis. These improvements can make LCA a more credible decision-support tool for maritime decarbonisation.

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