Value chain · CLM-0827
In plain terms
The 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 had not used this kind of model for a space solar power study in roughly twenty years, a period in which European researchers had developed methods NASA's assessment did not draw on.
The claim as recorded
Wilson, Oqab and Dietrich state that NASA's 2024 OTPS assessment of the Innovative Heliostat Swarm (26.58 gCO2e/kWh) and the Mature Planar Array (40.38 gCO2e/kWh), both first-of-a-kind 2 GW systems delivering to the grid from 2050, was "based on an EEIO model developed by NASA, built upon their pre-existing cost models", covering development, assembly, operation, maintenance and disposal, and that "this was the first time that this modelling approach had been used for SPS in almost 20 years, ignoring 15+ years of European research on life cycle modelling for space systems".
Scope and limits
This is SRC-009's characterisation of NASA's report, not confirmation drawn from the NASA document itself. The "ignoring 15+ years of European research" framing is the authors' own wording and is not quoted from NASA. The authors are methodological rivals of the approach they describe. Verify NASA's own account of its method against SRC-012 before citing this as a fact about what NASA did.
What it assumes
No assumptions are recorded against this claim.
Where it comes from
Printed p.5: "...covered development, assembly, operation, maintenance and disposal for two first-of-a-kind systems delivering 2 GW of power to the electric power grid beginning in 2050. The reported impacts of each concept were 26.58 gCO2e/kWh for the Innovative Heliostat Swarm and 40.38 gCO2e/kWh for the Mature Planar Array."
Related records
- Answers question
- QST-008 not published in this release
Cite this
energyaperture.com/c/clm-0827
CLM-0827, 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-0826When the authors redid NASA's own 2024 figures for two satellite designs using their materials-based method instead of NASA's cost-based...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.