Empowering Eco-Conscious Planning: Advancing Digital Planning Tools with Carbon Footprint Calculators
Authors: Pathak Parth Dilip , Hudson Nicholas , Ilgin Bugrahan , Coutinho Luiz Henrique 
Published: April 2024

Digital planning tools are being effectively used for planning subsea projects at various stages, and until now, three criteria played a critical role—time, cost, and scope. Now, carbon emissions are of equal importance, and the best approach to keep them lower is to identify reduction tactics at the planning stage. In this work, carbon footprint calculators were built within these digital planning tools to empower sustainability for subsea projects.

Digital planning tools, such as a subsea planner, allow visual development and techno-economic analysis of field and facility layouts built with reservoir and site information from operators and an equipment portfolio from manufacturers. As the field layouts are created, the estimates for carbon emissions are instantaneously produced. The built-in emissions calculator relies on a database previously created by performing life cycle analysis for equipment based on ISO and GHG Protocol standards. Life cycle stages of raw material extraction, material processing, manufacturing, assembly, testing, transportation to site, installation, and operational phase emissions are included, in an approach referred to as "cradle to gate".

Project planning has traditionally been an act of balancing the three constraints of time, cost, and scope, commonly known as the iron triangle, representing a strong and rigid relationship that is hard to change once the project is defined. Changing any aspect will necessitate trade-offs against the other two, incurring significant cost and effort. Carbon footprint is now as important as time, cost, or scope when defining projects, so there are now four key aspects of project definition to consider when making investment decisions—the triangle has become a 3D tetrahedron. This means that skillful decision making on projects is now harder, and this complexity is best resolved by digital planning tools. These tools can analyze all aspects of this quadruple constraint, including the new dimension of carbon emissions, quickly and efficiently and make that information available to decision makers. Previously, manual processes using stand-alone calculations could take several weeks, with information gathering taking most of the time, followed by the verification process. With the digital planning tools, calculations and the database are created upfront and then reused to achieve consistency of results and one-time verification. A built-in carbon-footprint calculator provides instantaneous emissions estimates, which empowers eco-conscious planning.

These first digital tools in the industry offer operators both time savings and improvements in decision quality. Decisions made during early project phases, including carbon capture and sequestration evaluation, can be translated into direct assessments of life-of-field emissions for carbon footprint reporting. These solutions allow decision makers to assess the new dimension of emissions impact, along with time, cost, and scope, to drive projects forward quickly and efficiently, leading to faster projects and smaller carbon footprints.