The risk of burden shifting from embodied carbon calculation tools for the infrastructure sector

Jackson, David; Brander, Matthew

doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.03.171

Cited by 25 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…LCA methodology has a widespread utilization area around the world. For example, LCA in the infrastructure structure [25] is applied for capturing all changes due to the decisions instead of utilization of embodied carbon calculator tools in order to manage emissions of infrastructure projects. As another example from the infrastructure sector, the requirement of integration of disassembly and deconstruction phase into building information systems [26] are shown by means of LCA methodology.…”

Section: Review Of Life Cycle Assessment (Lca) and Life Cycle Cost (Lcc)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Selection of the Most Sustainable Renewable Energy System for Bozcaada Island: Wind vs. Photovoltaic

Oğuz

Şentürk

2019

Sustainability

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Energy production without destroying the environment has been one of the most crucial issues for people living in today’s world. In order to analyze whole environmental and/or economic impacts of the energy production process, life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle cost (LCC) are widely used. In this study, two distinct renewable energy systems are assessed. First, a land-based wind farm, which has been operating in Bozcaada Island since 2000, is compared to a proposed solar photovoltaic power plant in terms of Energy Pay-Back Time (EPBT) periods and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and life cycle cost. The energy production process including the recycling phase evaluated “from cradle to grave” using GaBi software for both cases. All scenarios are compared by considering different impact categories such as global warming potential (GWP), acidification potential (AP), and eutrophication potential (EP). Following this, levelized unit cost to produce 1 MWh electricity (LUCE) is calculated for both systems. This study revealed that LCA and LCCA are useful and practical tools that help to determine drawbacks and benefits of different renewable energy systems considering their long-term environmental and economic impacts. Our findings show that onshore wind farms have a number of benefits than proposed photovoltaic power plants in terms of environmental and cost aspects.

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Section: Review Of Life Cycle Assessment (Lca) and Life Cycle Cost (Lcc)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Selection of the Most Sustainable Renewable Energy System for Bozcaada Island: Wind vs. Photovoltaic

Oğuz

Şentürk

2019

Sustainability

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“…Particularly, decisions made prior to the build phase of projects could have serious ramifications for carbon emissions during an asset's lifetime. As Jackson and Brander (2019) highlight, emission savings during the build phase of a high-speed rail project were quickly offset by increased emissions during the operation and use phase of the asset. If the designers assign a higher value to reducing emissions during the construction of the asset then overall emissions could increase rather than decrease.…”

Section: Carbon Calculation Tools and Their Valuementioning

confidence: 99%

“…We use a case study approach to examine the development and piloted implementation of a carbon calculation tool within a UK‐based construction organisation through qualitative data collected over a 3‐year period. In doing so, we fulfil the need to explore the barriers preventing the implementation of carbon calculation tools in the construction industry (Jackson & Brander, 2019) and fill the gap of qualitative studies investigating low‐carbon techniques within the construction industry (Giesekam, Barrett, & Taylor, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We use a case study approach to examine the development and piloted implementation of a carbon calculation tool within a UK-based construction organisation through qualitative data collected over a 3-year period. In doing so, we fulfil the need to explore the barriers preventing the implementation of carbon calculation tools in the construction industry (Jackson & Brander, 2019) and fill the gap of qualitative studies investigating low-carbon techniques within the construction industry (Giesekam, Barrett, & Taylor, 2016). This paper is structured as follows: First, we discuss carbon calculation tools and their value before showing how achieving carbon emissions reduction in the construction industry is challenging and discuss what can be learned from other industries and disciplines to ease this.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Addressing the challenges of integrating carbon calculation tools in the construction industry

Jackson

Kaesehage

2020

Bus Strat Env

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The construction industry is facing growing pressure to reduce carbon emissions. An important first step is to quantify emissions from construction projects enabling designs to be changed and emissions reduced. Whilst progress has been made in the development of carbon calculation tools, the uptake of these tools has been slow. This paper seeks to understand the reasons for the slow implementation of carbon calculation tools in the construction industry and provide guidance on how to overcome these challenges. We find there are specific issues that prevent tools being used such as data security and usability, but more general issues such as a lack of education or regulation also pose a challenge. Our findings suggest that despite the benefits that can come from using carbon calculation tools to reduce emissions, the use of tools on their own will be insufficient to achieve the needed carbon reduction and wider emissions-related change. Instead, carbon calculation tools need to be looked at within and across construction organisations through training, industry-wide standards and regulations as well as organisation-wide requirements and collaboration. The construction industry has a reputation for being slow to react to change, but if this industry waits for regulation before taking action, then the timescales involved may be too long given the pressing need to reduce emissions now. We recommend that for carbon calculation tools to be successfully integrated, the industry must work together to achieve more immediate change. K E Y W O R D S barriers to change, carbon calculators, carbon management, construction industry, emission reduction, enabling change 1 | INTRODUCTION Climate change is 'the greatest challenge of our time' (Fanelli, 2014, p. 15), and to prevent global average temperature rise exceeding the 1.5 C target set in the Paris Agreement (UN, 2015), a significant reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is needed. An often overlooked sector for achieving such a reduction in carbon emissions is the construction industry. Directly or indirectly, the construction and use of infrastructure assets accounts for over half of the United Kingdom's (UK's) total carbon emissions (Enzer, Manidaki, Radford, & Ellis, 2013) requiring reduction by 50% by 2025 (HM Government, 2013). Although growing attention has focused on how to reduce carbon emissions in this industry, only little change and reduction of emissions has been achieved so far (Xavier, Naveiro,

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“…The approaches are consequential LCA and attributional LCA methodology (Chester et al, 2013). The former is focused on evaluating the time-dependent system-wide change in emissions, while the later employs average footprint values with the consequent risk of burdenshifting (Jackson and Brander, 2019). There has also been a progressive adoption of the LCA methodology in discrete application types.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring the Development of a BIM-Enabled Process Framework for LCA of Rail Tracks

Akponeware¹,

Dawood²,

Rodríguez³

et al. 2020

CIB W78 Proceedings

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A key 21st century infrastructure challenge is lowering cost and carbon over an infrastructure's whole lifecycle. But, accounting for the carbon footprint of a railway system is problematic due to the complexity of railway systems. Within the rail sector, there is still a lack of infrastructure frameworks which can accurately capture actions, interactions and associated processes by role actors during lifecycle analysis. Whilst there is increased focus to facilitate information digitisation in railway systems, there is a scarcity of literature which attempt to systematise and formalise the process of conducting lifecycle analysis (LCA) of railway systems. This paper identifies complexities associated with legacy LCA methodologies in the rail sector. It then proposes a methodology which applies design science techniques to facilitate the creation and re-use of information and data in a systematic way within a structured process workflow. The proposed methodology enables lifecycle information for a rail-track to be produced collaboratively in an integrated format. In addition, the proposed LCA technique allows the creation of LCA process workflows which can be deployed to the web, potentially integrating with other optioneering applications and BIM platforms.

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The risk of burden shifting from embodied carbon calculation tools for the infrastructure sector

Cited by 25 publications

References 31 publications

Selection of the Most Sustainable Renewable Energy System for Bozcaada Island: Wind vs. Photovoltaic

Selection of the Most Sustainable Renewable Energy System for Bozcaada Island: Wind vs. Photovoltaic

Addressing the challenges of integrating carbon calculation tools in the construction industry

Exploring the Development of a BIM-Enabled Process Framework for LCA of Rail Tracks

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