Lifecycle Assessment (LCA)

Lifecycle assessment tallies the environmental burden of a fuel or product across its whole chain, from feedstock extraction and production to delivery and use. For marine fuels the IMO splits it into a well-to-tank stage (production and supply) and a tank-to-wake stage (onboard combustion), summing to the well-to-wake total that the Net-Zero Framework regulates. The IMO Lifecycle GHG Guidelines MEPC.391(81) set the default emission factors that decide whether an alternative fuel is genuinely lower-carbon.