Life Cycle Assessments: A key to a greener future?

Hamburg Aviation Green

In February 2023, the Brazilian government sank a retired aircraft carrier in the Atlantic Ocean. Scrapping the rusting hulk in the usual way had became difficult and prohibitively costly, the Brazilian government decided, in part because hazardous materials like asbestos used in the boat's construction had pushed up disposal costs.
The episode is an extreme example of a common problem: how can designers of large, complex machines take into account the overall environmental impact of construction, operation and disposal? Life Cycle Assessment is a research tool that's been common in other industries for years but is now enjoying a surge of interest in aviation.
As passengers and policymakers look ever more closely at the ecological impact of flying, frameworks such as LCA have great potential to reduce the long-term impact of aircraft. And that potential goes way beyond GHG emissions: all materials, components, processes and systems - and their interplay - are assessed.
LCAs allow aircraft designers and company planners to select the right components and systems, recommending solutions not only for economic but also environmental reasons. But they also rely on gathering and integrating enough reliable data, a challenging task even in an increasingly data-driven industry like aviation.
On this very enlightening episode of Hamburg Avation Green, we talked to Antonia Rahn, a researcher at German Aerospace Center (DLR)'s Institute for MRO. Antonia is a leading expert on Life Cycle Assessments and their use in the aviation industry. If you weren't aware of LCAs and their benefits to aviation, this is a great primer on how they can benefit industrial design of new aeroplanes, mainenance operations and recycling.
Find out more about DLR's ALICIA project here (German)
Thank you, Antonia, for the great conversation!