Understanding the contribution of tunnels to the overall energy consumption of and carbon emissions from a railway

Pritchard, James A.; Preston, John

doi:10.1016/j.trd.2018.09.010

Cited by 31 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…Lee et al [ 12 ] quantified GHG emissions from construction modules covering earthworks, civil engineering activities (such as the construction of tunnels, viaducts, and bridges), railway tracks, passenger stations, and energy transmission and telecommunication systems for the entire HSR lines while identifying the key activity of each module and found about 92% of emissions originated from the use of materials. Pritchard and Preston [ 13 ] explored the contribution of tunnel engineering to the overall carbon emissions of railways based on multiple railway project cases and found that tunnels add significantly to both the embodied and operational energy consumption and GHG emissions of railway infrastructure. Kaewunruen et al [ 14 ] summarized material characteristics and calculated the carbon emissions and energy consumption of material production for tunnel and rail construction.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Carbon Emission Factors Identification and Measurement Model Construction for Railway Construction Projects

Zhang²,

Dong

et al. 2022

IJERPH

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Carbon emissions have become a focus of political and academic concern in the global community since the launch of the Kyoto Protocol. As the largest carbon emitter, China has committed to reaching the carbon peak by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060 in the 75th United Nations High-level Meeting. The transport sector needs to be deeply decarbonized in China to achieve this goal. Previous studies have shown that the carbon emissions of the railway sector are small compared to highways, waterways, and civil aviation. However, these studies only consider the operation stage and do not consider the carbon emissions caused by large-scale railway infrastructure construction during the construction stage. As an essential source of carbon emissions and the focus of emissions reduction, the carbon emission of railway construction projects (RCPs) is in urgent need of relevant research. Based on a systematic literature review (SLR), this paper sorts out the carbon emission factors (CEFs) related to RCPs; combines semi-structured expert interviews to clarify the carbon emissions measurement boundary of RCPs; modifies and calibrates CEFs; constructs the carbon emission measurement model of RCPs including building material production stage, building material transportation stage, and construction stage; and conducts empirical analysis to validate carbon emission factors and measurement models. This study effectively complements the theoretical research on CEFs and measurement models in the construction stage of railway engineering and contributes to guiding the construction of low-carbon railways practically.

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Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Carbon Emission Factors Identification and Measurement Model Construction for Railway Construction Projects

Zhang²,

Dong

et al. 2022

IJERPH

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“…However, due to incomplete statistical data (Sun et al, 2016), conventional studies on transportation carbon emissions have primarily focused on estimating the total emissions across the entire transportation sector to assist the government in formulating reasonable control policies (Zhang and Wei, 2015;Lopez et al, 2018). Relatively few studies have focused specifically on carbon emissions associated with specific modes of transportation; those that do exist have mostly employed quantitative measurements for air and railroad transportation (Chao, 2014;Edwards et al, 2016;Pritchard and Preston, 2018). Nevertheless, the transportation network is not a single system that relies on an individual mode of transportation; rather, it is an integrated system comprising various modes of transportation.…”

Section: Carbon Emissions From Transportationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mapping Highway Mobile Carbon Source Emissions Using Traffic Flow Big Data: A Case Study of Guangdong Province, China

Zhang

et al. 2022

Front. Energy Res.

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The continuously growing transportation sector has become the second largest, yet increasing, industrial emissions source of CO2, posing serious challenges to global environmental security. Among the various transport modes, road transportation yields the highest cumulative level of CO2 emissions. However, these emissions have not been sufficiently investigated in previous studies, especially with respect to analyses from the perspective of vehicle emission sources. This can make source management and emissions reduction difficult. To address these methodological issues, this study aims to build a highway traffic carbon emissions monitoring and spatial analysis system, employing the mobile carbon sources concept, and establish a carbon emissions model encompassing all types of passenger and freight vehicles based on interstation O-D traffic flow data recorded by the toll collection network, to calculate vehicle carbon emissions and create a mobile carbon source emissions map. Empirical analyses in Guangdong Province revealed that, compared with conventional studies, the mobile carbon source emission mapping approach can accurately identify vehicle types with higher emissions while assisting with source management. Of the average total daily carbon emissions from all types of vehicles that use highways (15,311 t), 57.10% originated from freight vehicles (8,743 t) while passenger vehicles contributed 42.90%. By specific vehicle type, emissions mainly originated from small and medium-sized vehicles, including Class I passenger vehicles (i.e., cars) and Class I and III freight vehicles. Further, the proposed method could locate road sections characterized by high carbon emissions. High-emission sections in Guangdong Province were mainly spatially autocorrelated, with peak aggregations on national highways; near economically developed and densely populated areas; and adjacent to surrounding airports, ports, and overpass roads. This study improves the scientific and spatial analytical accuracy for carbon emissions measurements of highway vehicles, thus informing source management and sustainable development, as well as providing technical support for attaining carbon neutrality in China.

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“…There is evidence that studies on tailpipe emissions are more popular (Rocha et al 2018; De Martinis and Corman 2018; Meynerts et al 2017;Chester et al 2013) owing largely to the ease of their validation via comparison with other modes of rail transport (Esters and Marinov 2014). Contemporary studies by Pritchard and Preston (2018) concluded that studies which ignore the contribution of rail infrastructure might be misleading. They found that studies which discount the emissions of rail infrastructure by only considering use-phase emissions might erroneously promote railway transport as having lower carbon impacts on the environment.…”

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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Understanding the contribution of tunnels to the overall energy consumption of and carbon emissions from a railway

Cited by 31 publications

References 7 publications

Carbon Emission Factors Identification and Measurement Model Construction for Railway Construction Projects

Carbon Emission Factors Identification and Measurement Model Construction for Railway Construction Projects

Mapping Highway Mobile Carbon Source Emissions Using Traffic Flow Big Data: A Case Study of Guangdong Province, China

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

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