Decarbonisation of small-scale railway earthwork interventions using PAS 2080 life-cycle methodology
Decarbonisation of small-scale railway earthwork interventions using PAS 2080 life-cycle methodology
Transport is responsible for about 23% of global energy-related CO 2 emissions (also referred to as carbon or GHGs), in addition to those associated with building and maintaining the infrastructure. Thus, the transport sector must rapidly accelerate its decarbonisation efforts to help countries limit their emissions to meet Nationally Determined Contributions established in response to the Paris Agreement. This is especially important given IPCC estimates that the 1.5 °C line of global warming will be crossed in the early 2030s. Transportation sector CO 2 emissions are attributable to the infrastructure (mainly in construction, maintenance, and repair) and vehicles using it. Both areas will require urgent attention. The carbon emissions associated with the construction and maintenance of railway infrastructure are currently not well understood, hence meaningful whole life-cycle analysis of railway geotechnical assets is problematic. Filling this knowledge gap requires measurement of the CO 2 and carbon footprint associated with railway assets and identification of hot spots. This paper outlines tangible steps that can be taken, aligned to PAS 2080 life-cycle stages, for several types of mainline railway earthworks over differing temporal scales of earthwork interventions to decarbonise these interventions and help reach net zero. Research, based on a dataset of 50 small-scale mainline railway earthwork case studies in Great Britain, has found that for differing temporal interventions the carbon hotspots were in differing PAS 2080 life-cycle stages thereby requiring a range of different solutions to deliver decarbonisation.
Carbon footprinting, Net zero, Railway infrastructure
199-207
Navaei, Tracey Najafpour
c7223136-e1fb-4eed-aeeb-d83ca7ca5d58
Blainey, Simon
ee6198e5-1f89-4f9b-be8e-52cc10e8b3bb
Powrie, William
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Preston, John
ef81c42e-c896-4768-92d1-052662037f0b
Rujikiatkamjorn, Cholachat
Navaei, Tracey Najafpour
c7223136-e1fb-4eed-aeeb-d83ca7ca5d58
Blainey, Simon
ee6198e5-1f89-4f9b-be8e-52cc10e8b3bb
Powrie, William
600c3f02-00f8-4486-ae4b-b4fc8ec77c3c
Preston, John
ef81c42e-c896-4768-92d1-052662037f0b
Rujikiatkamjorn, Cholachat
Navaei, Tracey Najafpour, Blainey, Simon, Powrie, William and Preston, John
(2024)
Decarbonisation of small-scale railway earthwork interventions using PAS 2080 life-cycle methodology.
Rujikiatkamjorn, Cholachat, Indraratna, Buddhima and Xue, Jianfeng
(eds.)
In Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Transportation Geotechnics (ICTG) 2024: Sustainable Infrastructure and Numerical Modeling in Roads, Rails, and Harbours.
vol. 7,
Springer Singapore.
.
(doi:10.1007/978-981-97-8237-6_20).
Record type:
Conference or Workshop Item
(Paper)
Abstract
Transport is responsible for about 23% of global energy-related CO 2 emissions (also referred to as carbon or GHGs), in addition to those associated with building and maintaining the infrastructure. Thus, the transport sector must rapidly accelerate its decarbonisation efforts to help countries limit their emissions to meet Nationally Determined Contributions established in response to the Paris Agreement. This is especially important given IPCC estimates that the 1.5 °C line of global warming will be crossed in the early 2030s. Transportation sector CO 2 emissions are attributable to the infrastructure (mainly in construction, maintenance, and repair) and vehicles using it. Both areas will require urgent attention. The carbon emissions associated with the construction and maintenance of railway infrastructure are currently not well understood, hence meaningful whole life-cycle analysis of railway geotechnical assets is problematic. Filling this knowledge gap requires measurement of the CO 2 and carbon footprint associated with railway assets and identification of hot spots. This paper outlines tangible steps that can be taken, aligned to PAS 2080 life-cycle stages, for several types of mainline railway earthworks over differing temporal scales of earthwork interventions to decarbonise these interventions and help reach net zero. Research, based on a dataset of 50 small-scale mainline railway earthwork case studies in Great Britain, has found that for differing temporal interventions the carbon hotspots were in differing PAS 2080 life-cycle stages thereby requiring a range of different solutions to deliver decarbonisation.
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ICTG Author Copy of Final Accepted Manuscript 031224
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e-pub ahead of print date: 23 October 2024
Keywords:
Carbon footprinting, Net zero, Railway infrastructure
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 496084
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/496084
ISSN: 2366-2557
PURE UUID: cae68acf-e1a5-4cec-ad00-0f5955c1cc0c
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Date deposited: 03 Dec 2024 17:39
Last modified: 07 Dec 2024 02:44
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Contributors
Editor:
Cholachat Rujikiatkamjorn
Editor:
Buddhima Indraratna
Editor:
Jianfeng Xue
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