Liquefied natural gas (LNG) has become a central part of global energy security. After the loss of Russian pipeline gas in 2022, Europe turned to LNG imports at short notice, and the United States has since grown into one of the world's largest suppliers. The climate performance of LNG is not fixed, however. It depends on the full supply chain: how much methane escapes during gas production, how much energy the liquefaction plant consumes, and which vessels carry the cargo to market. Methane deserves particular attention, because one kilogram of methane warms the climate roughly thirty times more than one kilogram of CO2 over a hundred years, so relatively small losses carry a large weight in the total. Regulation is moving in the same direction: under EU Regulation 2024/1787, importers must first report, and later demonstrate, the methane intensity of the gas they place on the EU market.

Reducing these emissions is also an economic decision. Electrifying a liquefaction plant, cutting upstream methane losses, or modernising the shipping fleet all change the cost of delivered LNG as well as its emissions. Current assessment practice cannot weigh these effects together in a consistent way. Techno-economic analysis (TEA) and life-cycle assessment (LCA) are carried out in separate workflows, with different system boundaries and data structures, and the few LNG studies that report both combine the results only after two separate calculations. What the literature does not provide is a model that calculates stage-resolved costs and emissions of an LNG supply chain within one boundary, driven by the same throughput. The objective of this thesis is to develop and demonstrate such a framework, applied to the pathway from U.S. producing basins through Sabine Pass Liquefaction (SPL) to European import terminals.

The framework extends OpenTESim, an open-source platform for techno-economic simulation, with an emission-flow module that mirrors the existing cashflow module. Costs and greenhouse-gas flows attach to the same hierarchy of supply-chain stages, liquefaction trains, and process units, and are read from the same Excel input workbooks. Annual throughput links the two halves of the model, and loss factors express all stages per kilogram of LNG delivered. The system boundary is well-to-tank: from upstream production, to liquefaction, and via ocean transport to the liquid storage tanks at the import terminals. End-use combustion and regasification are excluded. The model is built entirely from public data, including SEC filings, the export-authorisation filing for the planned Trains 7-9, a basin-level gas-supply study and roughly 15,800 cargo-tracking records. It is calibrated against observed SPL operations over 2016-2025, and decarbonisation measures enter as overlays on the input layer, so that each measure changes cost and emissions through the same physical assumptions.

For the 2022 reference year, the modelled pathway emits 0.642 kg CO2e per kilogram of LNG delivered to Europe. Upstream production contributes about 45, liquefaction about 39%, and ocean transport about 16%. Much of the climate performance of delivered U.S. LNG is therefore set before the gas reaches the export terminal. The delivered cost is about 528 USD per tonne of LNG, of which the feedgas price is the largest component, ahead of shipping (106 USD/t) and the levelised liquefaction cost (91 USD/t). The results are route-specific: the same LNG shipped to Asia carries roughly twice the ocean-transport intensity of the European route.

The intervention results show that the cost of abatement depends strongly on where and how a measure is applied. Electrifying the refrigeration compressors of the planned Trains 7-9 with grid power cuts liquefaction emissions by 12.3% at about 276 USD per tonne of CO2e avoided, because the regional grid still runs largely on fossil generation. Supplying the same motors through a wind power purchase agreement deepens the reduction to 29.4% at about 75 USD/t CO2e. Both options raise the unit cost of LNG and only remain cost-neutral at utilisation rates above the current base level. Fleet modernisation adds little on this route, since the Europe-bound fleet is already largely modern. The largest single lever is upstream methane abatement: scenarios anchored to IEA methane pathways reduce the delivered intensity by up to 13% on their own. A combined package of fleet evolution, stated-policies methane abatement, and wind-powered electrification reaches 0.471 kg CO2e/kg by 2050, a reduction of about one quarter, while the full technical bound reaches 0.323 kg CO2e/kg, roughly half. These projections are structured what-if trajectories, not forecasts.

The sensitivity analysis identifies utilisation as the strongest cost driver and the upstream basin emission factor as the strongest emission driver, which places the largest uncertainty where public data are weakest. No tested variation overturns the stage ranking or the ordering of the interventions. Several limitations qualify the results. The boundary excludes end-use combustion, which releases several times the supply-chain emissions modelled here. The three stages are modelled at different depths, so abatement costs could only be quantified for the liquefaction measures. The upstream data are an inventory-based 2022 snapshot, and measurement studies suggest actual methane emissions may be higher. The relative comparisons between stages, scenarios, and assets are therefore more reliable than the absolute values.

The main contribution of this thesis is that it shows that costs and emissions of an LNG supply chain can be assessed together, at asset level, from public data alone, by attaching mirrored cashflow and emission-flow calculations to one modular model structure. The framework suits screening and comparative analysis, for example ranking abatement options for a specific terminal or comparing suppliers under the EU methane regulation. ... Read more

The Nahuel Huapi National Park, in the Lake District of Northern Patagonia, Argentina, is well known for its tourism industry all year round. After COVID-19, the area saw a significant increase in the number of tourists traveling to the area. This means that the lake located in the heart of the district, Lago Nahuel Huapi, is being used more and more to explore the environmental richness of the area by boat. Now, the capacity of mooring spaces is no longer sufficient in the region, resulting in the construction of illegal private docks along the shore. To reduce this impact on the environment the authorities granted in 2024 a concession to develop one of the last not yet commercialized marina’s in the region: the marina in Bahía López.

This report provides a consult for the concessionaire of this development. The process begins with a research phase, consisting of an area study, and the mapping of environmental and hydrodynamic constraints. Subsequently, stakeholders are categorized, as the development of a marina in a national park entails complex regulations from multiple organizations. The outcomes of the research phase are translated into specific functional requirements for the marina. These functional requirements are the basis for the next phase, the design phase. This phase begins with the formulation of a design vision statement, formulating the project response to local conditions. Based on this, three different conceptual designs with various technical solutions are developed. Through a multi-criteria analysis, the concepts are tested on their robustness in order to chose a final concept. This concept is then elaborated into a preliminary design. Presenting an overview of the marina’s facilities, including structural designs, operational needs, and capital costs. Finally, suggestions for future development
are provided, outlining the next steps to advance the marina to a next phase.
... Read more