MarineShift360

11th Hour Racing Partnership

MarineShift360 is a new marine industry collaboration that is creating a life cycle assessment (LCA) tool to empower the boating sector to take responsibility for its environmental impact. A life cycle assessment is a way to understand the resource footprint of a product over its entire lifetime from cradle to grave. Currently in phase two of development, the tool will enable marine businesses to measure and understand where a product has its greatest environmental impact, whether it is a single component or an entire yacht. Using industry-wide, reliable datasets, users of the tool will be able to compare choices and investigate alternatives at the design stage to increase efficiency and reduce costs without compromising on performance.

The end goal is to empower the marine industry to fully understand the environmental footprint of its products and enable a shift to a circular economy. This is critical for business and is driven by potential future environmental legislation, consumer demand, and the urgent need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

A selection of initiatives through this partnership includes:

• Deliver a marine industry Life Cycle Assessment tool that facilitates smart choices within design and manufacturing processes.
• Measure global warming potential (kgCO2e), ozone depletion potential, acidification potential, non-renewable resource depletion, energy consumption, and waste production with LCA tool.
• Establish ten Pilot Partners with a variety of industry leaders in their fields to further develop the LCA tool. Partners will be asked to provide data from their materials and processes which will create a fully comprehensive database.
• Use industry-wide data to continuously develop the tool on a platform designed specifically for the marine industry.
• Provide a platform that encourages collaboration across the marine community to better quantify its environmental impact, share sustainability best practices and inspire positive change.

Background

11th Hour Racing is the founding partner of MarineShift360, along with Into The Blue. The project was initiated during the British challenge for the 35th America’s cup in 2017. Together, 11th Hour Racing and Into the Blue will develop the LCA tool from a one-off, in-house tool, to something that can provide significant value to the entire marine industry.