Life Cycle Assessment of IMOCA boats

The marine sector (all uses combined) represents 4% of the world’s carbon fibre market (source CarbConsult). However, the yacht racing domain is rallying together to decipher its own impact and reduce it. IMOCA is not alone in this approach. Other Classes are picking up on it too, eager to break new ground together.  

In 2021, the IMOCA skippers made it compulsory to carry out a Life-Cycle Assessment* for every new boat and to make these studies useful, IMOCA has internalised the process, appointed naval architect Noémie Provost, and used the same tooling, the MarineShift360 software created especially for boat building. This ISO14040:2006 and ISO14044:2006-certified tool for assessing one’s carbon footprint sources its information from the global reference database Ecoinvent. Developed by 11th Hour Racing, the software has notably enabled its IMOCA team to be the first to publish a full report in 2021 on the construction of a new generation boat, their Verdier design Mālama.  

“The quest for sustainable performance doesn’t happen overnight. It involves meticulous analysis of our current situation and how we’re going to achieve it,”explains Noémie Provost. In this analysis, IMOCA has focused on the ‘shell’ section – which is the heaviest – and the manufacturing tool, namely the moulds. Three standardised elements have been examined: mast, boom and keel, as well as the prototype parts: hull, deck, structure, rudders and foils. After a year, 34 yards spanning 6 countries have collaborated on the project and 102 parts have already been analysed.  

Six criteria are taken into account: the potential global warming (kgCO2), resource depletion (kgCue), marine eutrophication (kgNe), water consumption (m3), energy consumption (MJ) and waste (kg).

The LCA campaign is already providing the first results, though we’ll have to wait for the consolidated study in 2023. It turns out that waste is a hotspot with considerable potential for reduction (86% of the footprint from building a decked hull), which the network is already working on. As a result, it’s very likely that such things as waste will form a key part of the next Class Rule.

*Life-Cycle Assessment It’s a study that identifies and quantifies the physical flow of material and energy associated with human activity from a product’s manufacture to its end of life.