Life-Cycle Carbon Footprint Assessment and Emission Reduction Strategy Analysis of Ship Supply Chains
The shipping industry's carbon emissions have drawn increasing attention. This study quantifies the carbon footprint of ship supply chains across their life cycle to identify key emission stages and reduction potentials, promoting green transformation. Based on life-cycle theory and using process analysis, a carbon footprint assessment model was constructed covering raw material acquisition, construction and assembly, transportation and distribution, and scrapping and recycling. The model was applied to a case ship, followed by multi-scenario and sensitivity analyses. Results show that the transportation and distribution stage is the dominant source of positive emissions, accounting for 88.73% of the total, while the scrapping and recycling stage provides a carbon offset benefit of 6.77%. Among five emission reduction scenarios—low-carbon materials, green energy, green logistics, circular economy, and comprehensive low-carbon—the reduction efficiencies are 2.02%, 0.06%, 18.44%, 0.42%, and 20.95%, respectively, indicating that green logistics is the core pathway for decarbonizing ship supply chains. Under the green logistics scenario, optimizing the LNG carbon emission factor yields more significant reduction effects. This study provides a life-cycle perspective on the carbon footprint structure of ship supply chains, offering theoretical references for identifying key reduction links and optimizing low-carbon technology pathways.