A Sustainability-Driven Approach to Early-Stage Offshore Vessel Design: A Case Study on Wind Farm Installation Vessels

This study presents a methodological framework for integrating LCA principles into the preliminary design phase of an offshore vessel. The framework is based on the case of a wind farm installation vessel (WTIV). The proposed approach diverges from traditional ship design by treating environmental impact as an important criterion and integrates the LCA into the early design stages, which is a novelty of the sustainability-driven ship design. On the basis of steps usually conducted in the preliminary ship design, a parametric study was conducted to evaluate the life cycle emissions associated with the shipbuilding, maintenance, operation, and dismantling phases. Ship characteristics such as displacement, lightship weight, and main dimensions were correlated with LCA factors, enabling the quantification of emissions at an early design stage with the use of the developed database and statistical regression models. Power demand estimation for different operational scenarios—free-running transit, dynamic positioning, and stationary installation—highlighted the significant contribution of offshore-specific vessel activities to life cycle emissions. The results demonstrate that the operational phases remain the most important contributors to overall emissions, mostly through CO2 and NOx production. However, emissions from shipbuilding, maintenance, and dismantling also play a critical role, justifying the need for early design interventions. Our findings highlight the need to integrate LCA into the design spiral for balanced sustainability, efficiency, and feasibility. This study provides a foundation for future research into multi-objective optimization models that incorporate LCA into offshore vessel design.