A new Lifecycle Emissions Assessment Tool developed by ReFlow with Danish Shipping and leading shipowners lets users model a vessel’s full environmental footprint from construction to recycling. The goal is to help the industry make data-based decisions toward climate-neutral shipping by 2050.
A new digital tool is giving shipowners a clearer picture of their vessels’ total environmental footprint. Developed by Danish company ReFlow and facilitated by Danish Shipping, the Lifecycle Emissions Assessment Tool simulates the entire “well-to-wake” lifecycle of a ship, from raw material extraction and construction to decades of operation and end-of-life recycling.
The tool was built in collaboration with A.P. Moller – Maersk, DFDS, Torm, Cadeler, Navigator Gas, Svitzer, Uni-Tankers, and ZITON, with support from the Danish Maritime Fund. It follows international Life Cycle Assessment standards (ISO /44) and offers a unified framework for assessing vessel emissions across fuel types, design choices, and operating profiles.
As reported by Cyprus Shipping News, Rasmus Elsborg-Jensen, CEO of ReFlow, said the objective was to make sustainability decisions more precise and comparable. “Data driven green transition is the goal of the Lifecycle Emissions Assessment Tool,” he said. “The idea has been to develop a standard model for assessing the full lifecycle emissions of a vessel.”
For shipowners, the platform makes it possible to test different decarbonization strategies before committing to major investments. Users can model the effects of alternative fuels, equipment retrofits, and energy-efficiency upgrades, and compare both environmental and economic outcomes.
Cecilie Damgaard Jensen, Decarbonization Analyst at DFDS, noted at Cyprus Shipping News that upstream impacts are becoming increasingly important. “I believe the tool holds huge potential for having a simple way of estimating the upstream emissions from vessel production. We will be looking into it more when we look at new fuels especially, because the production side becomes more important,” she said.
Nina Porst, Executive Director of Climate, Environment and Security at Danish Shipping, added that practicality was a core focus. “For Danish Shipping it has been important to develop a tool that looks at the whole lifecycle of a vessel. It has also been important to us that the result is a tool that is operational and useful and effective in making the decarbonization process more manageable for our members,” she said.
The tool’s development marks a major step toward industry-wide standardization in emissions reporting and lifecycle transparency. ReFlow and Danish Shipping plan to expand its use to more vessel types and encourage collaboration among shipowners as the maritime sector works toward climate-neutral operations by 2050.
