A Comparative Life Cycle Assessment and Costing of Lighting Systems for Environmental Design and Construction of Sustainable Roads

Abstract

The management of the life cycle of the transport network is one of the main challenges of sustainable mobility. Roads and highways cause significant damage to the ecosystem. Specifically, lighting systems contribute to climate change, energy consumption, and human health effects. In this context, this work proposes the combination of life cycle assessment (LCA) with life cycle costing (LCC) to analyze the eco-efficiency of the life cycle of a road, including evaluation of the relative contribution of the lighting system to the total impact. Four scenarios were included in the model: (S1) high-pressure sodium lamps with ballast powered from the grid; (S2) halogen lamps powered from the grid; (S3) light-emitting diode lamps powered from the grid; and (S4) light-emitting diode lamps powered from a standalone photovoltaic system. The life cycle stages of raw material extraction, construction, use, maintenance, and end of road life were included in the analysis. The results show that scenarios S3 and S1 are the most eco-efficient relative to the less favorable S2 scenario (80% and 74% lower, respectively). Scenarios with the least environmental impact are the most economically viable.

Long-Term Monitoring Campaign of LED Street Lighting Systems: Focus on Photometric Performances, Maintenance and Energy Savings

“…• The implementation of public lighting systems with more efficient ones is currently promoted and supported by funding policies; • In the literature, some studies focused on the assessments of performances due to the retrofit of lighting systems (in terms of photometric performance, energy, and economic savings) [16,20,22,24,[27][28][29]31,33,34] and on a comparison with the previous system [17,21,23,25,26,30,32]. While the energy performances were assessed by data measured through in-field monitoring, photometric performances were mainly evaluated using simulation tools [30][31][32][33][34]; • Also, the monitoring of the photometric and energy performances of the new lighting systems over time is a crucial issue, and current studies are focused only on forecast estimates; • The design of new lighting installations is based on maintenance factors defined according to standard reference values, but there are no studies that report monitoring the depreciation of the actual performances of current LED lighting systems based on field measurements.…”

“…The most frequently adopted measures involve the replacement of obsolete luminaires with old light sources with more efficient lighting technologies (e.g., light-emitting diode (LED)) and/or the introduction of smart lighting control systems. It is demonstrated that the simple adoption of energy-efficient LED lighting can provide potential energy savings between 50 and 70% compared to the old technologies, with considerable benefit to tight city budgets and a good return on investment [20][21][22][23][24]. Moreover, in terms of environmental sustainability, a potential saving of more than 1400 million tons of CO 2 [7] can be achieved, and the investments cannot be only profitable and sustainable but also improve lighting quality [25].…”

Life Cycle Assessment of Sustainable Road Networks: Current State and Future Directions

“…This includes road components such as sidewalks [51], bridges [52,53], tunnels [54] or drainage system [55,56]; road systems and services, including marking systems [57,58], noise barriers [59,60], lighting systems [61][62][63], transportation and its influence on the use and operation phase [64][65][66]; the impact of incorporating new sustainable tech-nologies to improve road environmental performance [67,68]; as well as comparative studies of emissions generated on roads compared to other transportation systems [69] or the type of transport carried out on roads compared to others, such as trains or airplanes [70].…”