New project to help measure the environmental impact of EU space industry

A new project is under way at Glasgow Caledonian University to help the European Commission create guidelines for measuring the environmental impact of products in the EU space industry.

These guidelines, known as Product Environmental Footprint Category Rules (PEFCR), will provide a standardised way to evaluate and communicate the environmental performance of space-related products, from manufacturing to end-of-life.

To support this initiative, the project, which will be led at Glasgow Caledonian by Dr Andrew Wilson, will also develop and gather Environmental Footprint (EF) compliant datasets. These datasets will provide the necessary information to accurately assess the environmental impact of products, ensuring that the guidelines are based on reliable and relevant data.

Dr Wilson, who is based in the University’s Department of Civil Engineering & Environmental Management, said: “It has been long established that there is no common agreement on sector-specific rules concerning life-cycle assessments for space systems, space projects or space programmes. To this end, the European Commission (DG DEFIS) conducted a preliminary study in 2020 on the environmental impacts of the EU space programme. This study found a need for improved guidance, new datasets and better environmental modelling methods in the industry.”

The idea of using the Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) approach to measure the environmental impact of space systems was first proposed in 2021 in a research paper titled From Life Cycle Assessment of Space Systems to Environmental Communication and Reporting by a consortium consisting of Dr Andrew Wilson and Dr Keith Baker of Glasgow Caledonian.

Following this, in 2022, the European Commission worked with a group of experts to develop a shared vision and roadmap towards the development of a PEFCR framework for the European space sector. And earlier this year, the project was opened for new bids, and the team was invited to join a consortium to help develop the guidelines.

Dr Wilson said Glasgow Caledonian’s role in the project will be to conduct supporting studies using the first draft of the PEFCR guidelines along with the newly developed environmental datasets.

He added: “We will test whether these guidelines can be practically applied to different space products. The results from these studies will help refine and improve the guidelines, leading to the creation of a second draft that better meets the needs of the EU space industry.”