Ecodesign

Constraints drive innovation

As a response to growing concerns relating to the impacts of human activity on the environment, more stringent guidelines and legislation are being put in place, both on the European and international level.

ESA has set its own Green Agenda. And as part of that, the Agency aims to reduce the environmental impact of space systems and encourages a more sustainable procurement and supply chain. Beyond ESA’s own activities, the objective is to enable more sustainable development towards the objectives of the Paris Agreement and the European Green Deal throughout the space sector.

Each law imposes new restrictions on the product development process. Because this triggers the search for alternative solutions that comply with the new legislation, it ultimately drives innovation and lowers the cost of sustainable solutions because of their widespread adoption.

Quantifying sustainability

To improve on something, it needs to be evaluated first. The initial assessment is a baseline that can be used for comparison with the effects of the changes. Evaluating the environmental impacts of a mission is challenging, but not impossible.

Across a wide range of industries, the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology is used to quantitatively assess the environmental impacts of a product, process or service, considering all stages of its life cycle, from raw materials extraction and energy consumed during manufacturing to its end-of-life.

To assess the environmental impacts of space missions, ESA has tailored the LCA methodology to space activities. This adapted version, available to European entities, is applied systematically to ESA projects and missions.

‘Ecodesigning’ a mission

Using the LCA to identify key issues in a product's life cycle is the first step towards ‘ecodesign’ – an approach that considers environmental aspects at all stages of a product development process, striving for products that make the lowest possible environmental impact throughout their life cycle.

Adopting the ecodesign approach allows for a product or mission to be developed with an improved environmental performance in mind. The target is realistic improvements, because it is essential that the sustainability efforts do not significantly increase the cost or reduce the product's final quality or performance. At the same time, ecodesign principles could help ensure for industry that a development process complies with sustainability targets and policies.

Getting practical

The ecodesign-based, space-tailored LCA developed in the frame of ESA’s Clean Space initiative is designed to support all of the agency’s space activities. This allows ESA to comply with the most stringent environmental regulations.

To facilitate the implementation of ecodesign into all European space activities, the agency has put in place a framework available to any entity from an ESA Member State preparing space activities.

ESA’s LCA framework consists of a regularly updated handbook and database. The database contains space-specific datasets from different phases of a product development process and is used to support modelling when conducting an LCA.

• The ESA LCA Handbook is available upon request at cleanspace@esa.int.
• The ESA LCA Database is available upon request through the Space Debris User Portal. For more access information, visit the Clean Space blog. Please note that a valid ecoinvent licence is needed for access.

Finding ecodesign stars

It can be quite a hurdle to test new concepts in space, it requires special expertise and can be risky and expensive. To help European industry cross this gap, ESA is planning EcoStars: the in-orbit demonstration of a selection of the most promising of newly proposed ecodesign technologies. In collaboration with European industry partners, ESA will push the ecodesign market forward – a win for all future space activities.