Leveraging environmental assessment and environmental justice to deliver equitable, decarbonized built infrastructure

Abstract

Climate change is the most pressing sustainability issue of our time, with anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions causing economic, environmental, and human health impacts. We need to achieve net-zero civil infrastructure systems to limit global temperature increases. Energy production and supply, transportation, buildings, and industry are examples of civil infrastructure systems. Examining the full scope of impacts throughout the conception, design, construction, operation, maintenance, and decommissioning of infrastructure systems will allow for improved mitigation and adaptation planning. Current planning processes and mechanisms will need to be transformed to achieve ‘climate-smart’ infrastructure that focus on thoughtful minimization of impacts, cooperation with communities, and understanding the implications of failing to act. Social equity is often left as an afterthought in environmentally conscious infrastructure planning. Life-cycle assessment (LCA) is the most complete and decision-powerful model for cataloging environmental impacts of a system. However, the methodology has limitations regarding how it might be leveraged to support multicriteria decision-making in decarbonizing our civil infrastructure systems, such as when trying to account for community preferences, an important element of a just transition. Future planning for the decarbonization of our built environment would benefit from a multi-criteria approach that encompasses elements of LCA, equity, and stakeholder collaboration, the latter two of which are key tenets for advancing environmental justice.