Development of the Well-to-Wake Life Cycle Assessment Model for Marine Fuels in R&D GREET 2025

Technical Report · Mon Dec 01 00:00:00 EST 2025

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/2999533· OSTI ID:2999533

Benvenutti, Lívia M. M. ^[1]; Kolodziej, Christopher P. ^[1]; Tripathi, Shashwat ^[1]; Benavides, Pahola Thathiana ^[1]; Wang, Michael ^[1]; Masum, Farhad H. ^[1]

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1. Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)

The Marine analysis capabilities in the 2025 Research and Development Greenhouse gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy use in Technologies (R&D GREET) have been updated to incorporate the latest findings from the Fourth International Maritime Organization (IMO) GHG Study.1 To support these updates and enhance user flexibility, the former single marine module used in previous R&D GREET versions has been split into two workbook tabs: The Marine_Fuel tab, which covers the fuel-cycle, and the Marine_Trip tab, which covers the trip-cycle. In the Marine_Fuel tab, fuel cycle results for 39 marine fuels are available—assuming a slow speed diesel engine—and can be seen in Appendix A. However, there are options for changing feedstocks for multiple fuels, ability to view results with or without pilot fuels for fuels such as methanol and ammonia, and carbon capture options. All these combinations make the number of total possible pathways over one hundred. For each pathway, life cycle emission results are divided into feedstock, conversion, and combustion categories, along with pilot fuel supply chain emissions for fuels used in dual fuel engines. In the newly created Marine_Trip tab, users can view the life cycle emissions of using these fuels from a trip perspective. Compared to R&D GREET 2024, 16 new types of vessels are added in R&D GREET 2025. Examples of results assuming the default size for each vessel type are available in Appendix A. Additional information categories on vessels are included such as vessel size, main propulsion type, engine power rating, combustion cycle, etc. based on the Fourth IMO GHG Study. Operational mode of the trip, fuel consumption, and load calculation were updated based on the report. The fuel consumption calculation also incorporates low-load adjustment, speed–power correction, weather correction, and fouling correction factors. Furthermore, fuel consumption in boilers or steam turbines is also added for the first time, besides fuel use in main propulsion engines and auxiliary engines. This effort makes the R&D GREET Marine capabilities more robust than before. Users will be able to estimate fuel consumption more accurately for more diverse choices of vessel categories, vessel sizes, and energy converters.

• Research Organization: Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Office of Sustainable Transportation. Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO)
• DOE Contract Number: AC02-06CH11357
• OSTI ID: 2999533
• Report Number(s): ANL/ESIA--25/18; 200289
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

09 BIOMASS FUELS