Elsevier

Ocean Engineering

Volume 122, 1 August 2016, Pages 317-321
Ocean Engineering

Local added value and environmental impacts of ship scrapping in the context of a ship's life cycle

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oceaneng.2016.05.026Get rights and content

Highlights

  • A combination of LCA and added value within the eco-efficiency is proposed.

  • Goal is to display a distribution of eco-efficiency over the ship life cycle.

  • Use phase dominates the life cycle and could share for a fairer distribution.

Abstract

Globalization leads to an increase in goods transported by ships. Ships are scrapped once they have reached the end of their use. Over its lifetime a ship generates added value, which benefits the owner, and at the same time harms the environment through emissions. A certain imbalance in the distribution of the added value and the harm to the environment can be observed over the lifetime of a ship. The goal of this study is to depict and quantify this imbalance and give an evaluation indicator in order to transparently describe this issue. Methods used in this study are Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), for the quantification of the environmental impacts, local added value, for the quantification of economic impact and the method of eco-efficiency. A literature review was conducted in order to estimate the added value per life cycle phase. Finally these two factors were put in relation and the adjusted eco-efficiency indicator was developed. As result it can be seen, that especially the European owners of the ship during its use phase benefit the most, whereas the Asian producers and dismantlers of the ship have to suffer comparatively more environmental impacts per unit of added value.

Section snippets

Introduction and goal of the study

Within our current global economic system the majority of goods, including primary resources, intermediate goods and end-products, are transported by ships at one time or another. In order to satisfy the demand for transport there are about 170,000 cargo vessels (MarineTraffic.com, 2015) travelling the seas. The ship is a durable capital good which is built to produce the service of transport. It goes through a product life cycle including three phases: production, use and end-of-life (EoL).

Methods and data

Within this chapter the definitions for Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), local added value and eco-efficiency are provided and the data basis for this study is laid out.

Results and discussion

The results are summarized in three figures. Fig. 3 includes two graphs of the adjusted eco-efficiency with the units [€/kg CO2-Equiv.] and [€/CTUh] non-cancer. Both graphs describe the distribution of the added value on one unit of impact over the life cycle of a ship and show the eco-efficiency of each life cycle phase. From both graphs in this figure it can be seen that the use phase of the ship is dominant with a share of way over 90% within the life cycle. Most of the value per impact is

Conclusions and outlook

From the previously presented results, a few conclusions can be drawn. First, the environmental impact per € added value (inverse adjusted eco-efficiency) is high for the production phase and especially for the end-of-life phase. Further, most of the economic benefit is gained during the use phase and remains in Europe, which reflects the purpose of existence of the ship. Due to the long use of the ship, most of the environmental impact is also generated in the use phase, but is emitted

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