The method of Life Cycle Performance Assessment (LCPA) is used to carry out a comprehensive analysis of new ship designs and to compare them to reference vessels (i.e. ships in operation).
The LCPA approach reduces LCA to a screening LCA of the product system “Ship” due to the size, complexity and its uniqueness and combines it with the economic assessment that considers every cash flow throughout a ship’s lifecycle to calculate the net present value and the amortization of each ship design. As a result, LCPA is considered a holistic approach for the comparative evaluation of alternative transport solutions. As basis for a comprehensive LCPA, relevant data for each lifecycle phase needs to be identified, collected and analysed.
The economic perspective is focusing on cash flows associated with the investigated ship. Therefore, accounting systems are the basis to collect relevant data like operation costs of a ship, consisting of cost categories like personnel, energy, maintenance, depreciation, taxes, etc. However, since LCPA considers a 25 year long lifecycle of a ship, the system supports the forecast of future developments of e.g. fuel costs over time to be defined by the user.
