Speaker
Description
The REACH requirements affect the European space sector to a great extent, both from a regulatory compliance and commercial perspective. The processes for Registration and in particular Authorisation of Substances of Very High Concern (SVHC), which aim at their substitution with suitable alternatives, pose continuous risks that have to be actively monitored and mitigated by the space industry to secure the reliable continuation of space activities and the EU’s independent access to space as a key element of the EU’s space policy
In the context of REACH, an obsolescence risk in the space industry can be defined as any possibility of impairment of quality and reliability or even loss of critical technologies for qualified materials and processes, which is induced by a chemical’s unavailability or substitution threat.
The European space sector has launched significant activities to identify and anticipate the REACH-related obsolescence risk for several years. The European space sector needs to make a further step forward and find ways to anticipate REACH-related obsolescence risks and develop technological solutions that minimize those risks as early as possible in the design of future space systems.
ESA has adopted the eco-design approach to design future space missions in a more environmentally friendly way: eco-design is a preventive approach to mitigate the environmental impacts of a product (good or service) as early as possible in the design phase. To do so, ESA successfully applied Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to space activities. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a powerful method, standardized at international level by ISO, to evaluate the potential environmental impacts of products and services in a comprehensive and objective manner and from a multi-criteria life cycle perspective.
ESA deemed these obsolescence risks as a fully-fledged dimension of its eco-design framework towards more sustainable space activities. This is why ESA commissioned a consortium led by Deloitte Sustainability and REACHLaw to develop a LCA-related methodology to identify, flag and classify the obsolescence risks due to REACH through the complete life-cycle of space products.
The project’s first step has consisted in a literature review and interviews aiming to identify existing similar initiatives in other sectors. On this basis, the project team developed a systematical methodology to map the REACH-related obsolescence risks to the use of certain space components/materials in the design of a space mission. This methodology now needs to be tested on several test cases to check its applicability.
In this presentation, we will recall the objectives of the project, present the key principles of the methodology developed in the frame of this project and discuss about the next steps and possible implications and uses for the European space industry.
