STORM IMAGERY
Clockwise from left: perennial raceboat enthusiast Peter Morton just beat the chainsaw to the famous Farr-designed Half Tonner Swuzzlebubble in 2013. Now fully restored, this iconic race yacht has just won the Half Ton Classic Cup for the third time; dying a slow death off Coconut Grove… a scene repeated in every creek and harbour in the world; a famous yacht familiar to many of our ‘more experienced’ readers, the Ron Holland-designed Admiral’s Cupper Silver Apple rots away up the Beaulieu River in England
boatyards, marinas and manufacturers while enhancing the capacity for sustainable growth in recreational boating. Dennis Nixon is director of Rhode Island Sea Grant and advisor for 11th Hour Racing. Evan Ridley is research assistant at Rhode Island Sea Grant and the University of Rhode Island
A SUSTAINABLE BUILD PROCESS BEGINS WITH DESIGN – Dr Richard Schuhmann, the Landing School The Landing School in Maine was founded in 1978 as a boatbuilding and design school that prepares students for careers in the marine industry through hands-on and academic learning experiences. The Landing School also offers the only current residential yacht design degree programme in the United States. The school is now undertaking a programme to incorporate the
tenets of sustainable design and development in the construction of composite – including wood – boats with very low, zero or net negative carbon footprints. The school is developing a workable Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) tool to understand the feasibility and in 2016 received a grant from 11th Hour Racing to support its work.
Back to the future In early 2017 the school was awarded a further grant with its partner Maine Maritime Academy, from the Maine Economic Improvement Fund, specifically to build a proof of concept lo- impact commercial trimaran. The innovative 38-footer was developed by Prof Doug Read and will be built in 2017-2018 at the school, with material selection guided by the revised 11th Hour Racing LCA tool.
What is an LCA tool? A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a forensic analysis of a product, process or material’s impact upon operational efficiencies and the environment. LCA commonly supports manufacturing decisions and is rapidly becoming an integral tool for manufacturing planning.
Why would a builder/designer be interested in an LCA? Through a product’s life there are myriad opportunities for ineffi- ciencies and waste. While these can be thought of as ‘pollution’ they also represent tangible financial losses to a builder. Tracking these losses with a LCA tool and mitigating them, a builder can get paid for cutting down on manufacturing pollution. Consumers also now increasingly lean toward greener products wherever possible.
How do you develop an LCA tool? An LCA tool is an algorithm for bean counting – among the most common ‘beans’ are material waste, storm water, dust, toxins and air pollutants. This process begins by identifying a list of the primary materials used. It is possible to get too granular and lose the ‘forest for the trees’; in a perfect world (of infinite time and money) every screw and paper towel used is included in the tally of materials; however, recent literature has shown that through intelligent deliberate under-specification of materials (excluding trivial players) it is possible to arrive at an LCA that is credible and affordable.
LCA in other industries LCA is a mainstream tool for environmental assessment across all industry and ISO 14040 (2006) currently provides a unified framework for performing LCA. For example, the LCA for the BMW i3 car includes an analysis of the production of ‘raw’ materials and manufacturing, through the use phase to recycling, with an impact assessment performed based on the Institute of Environmental Sciences’s (IES) method developed at the Dutch University of Leiden.
A carbon footprint vs an overall impact footprint
In the Landing School LCA, fossil CO2 emissions are accounted for in three ways: material extraction, material processing and man- ufacturing and associated transportation. We call this a ‘cradle-to-
commissioning’ assessment – tracking the materials’ CO2 footprint from the forest or factory to the boat leaving the facility ready for use. Because we use large quantities of wood it also accounts for the CO2 sequestered within that wood.
Why focus on design and not operation? As designers and manufacturers of boats, we are in a position to quantify our impacts and effect change within these domains. We focus on designing efficient hulls and material and manufacturing processes to mitigate impact on the environment. We do not design and manufacture propulsion systems. Whether a 19ft runabout is propelled using an electric outboard charged by a solar panel, or by a two-stroke engine is the decision of the consumer. How that consumer chooses to operate and dispose of the boat at the end-of-life is also outside the parameters of this process.
Industry interest Although still a prototype, the Landing School LCA tool has received good interest from the marine industry. Copies have been supplied to Sabre Yachts, Goetz Composites, Sparkman & Stephens, and Stephens Waring Yacht Design for beta testing. We continue to develop the tool based on the feedback from these New England- based companies to create a robust, user-friendly product. Dr Schuhmann is the president of the Landing School and a Landing School wooden boatbuilding graduate (1987)
q SEAHORSE 47
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