Value chain · CLM-0826
In plain terms
When the authors redid NASA's own 2024 figures for two satellite designs using their materials-based method instead of NASA's cost-based one, the carbon per unit of electricity came out about 11 to 18 per cent lower, and they say this suggests NASA's published figures for these two designs are too high.
The claim as recorded
Reproducing NASA's own 2024 inventory for two first-of-a-kind 2 GW SPS concepts commissioning in 2050 in a process-based model (SSSD v1.0.4_beta) returned 21.89 gCO2e/kWh for the Innovative Heliostat Swarm and 35.74 gCO2e/kWh for the Mature Planar Array, against NASA's EEIO figures of 26.58 and 40.38 gCO2e/kWh for the same two concepts, and the authors state this "suggests that the reported EEIO results are 21.40% and 12.97% overstated for these concepts", an average difference of 17 per cent.
Scope and limits
Covers only this paper's own reanalysis of NASA's two-concept case study, remapping NASA's reported inventory into the authors' own database "using a worst-case scenario for LCI data" where no direct dataset match existed. The modal verb is "suggests", not shows or demonstrates. It may NOT be used to support a general direction of divergence between the two methods: the same authors' earlier comparison on the 1978 DOE/NASA Reference System, recorded at CLM-0182, runs the OPPOSITE way, with process-based 5 to 6 times HIGHER than EEIO. The paper does not reconcile the two. The authors developed the process-based tool used on one side of the comparison. Printed p.9 states "uncertainty values were not calculated as part of this study", so no confidence interval attaches to any of these four figures.
What it assumes
No assumptions are recorded against this claim.
Where it comes from
Figure 5, printed p.8, gives EEIO 26.58 and 40.38 gCO2eq./kWh against process-based 21.89 and 35.74 gCO2eq./kWh. Printed p.9 s4.2: "This study concurs with that statement but suggests that the reported EEIO results are 21.40% and 12.97% overstated for these concepts." Printed p.11: "The results highlighted an average difference of 17% between the models for CO2e."
Related records
- Answers question
- QST-008 not published in this release
- Contradicts
- CLM-0182 When two different research teams assessed the exact same 1978 space solar power design, the...
Cite this
energyaperture.com/c/clm-0826
CLM-0826, Energy Aperture, as of 2024.
Connected records
Other published records linked to this one. A list, not a judgement.
- Also from SRC-009
- CLM-0182When two different research teams assessed the exact same 1978 space solar power design, the older accounting method (which spreads...CLM-0825The authors argue that the cost-based way of estimating carbon is too coarse for a custom-built industry like spacecraft, and they conclude...CLM-0827The authors say NASA's 2024 carbon figures for two satellite designs came out of a model built on NASA's own cost estimates, and that NASA...CLM-0828The authors say ESA's own space life-cycle guidance advises against the cost-based method because it tends to overstate environmental...CLM-0829The authors leave alumina, black carbon and water vapour from rocket exhaust out of their own carbon study because the atmospheric effects...CLM-0830The authors say an environmental claim about a space technology counts for nothing unless a proper standardised life-cycle study backs it...CLM-0831This is a conference paper from October 2024 that does not claim to have been independently peer reviewed, states that it calculated no...CLM-0849The range of 13 to 43 grams that NASA compares its satellites against comes from one US laboratory's dataset, and the two ends are the...More on the source page.
- Contradicted by
- CLM-0182When two different research teams assessed the exact same 1978 space solar power design, the older accounting method (which spreads...