TY - GEN
T1 - Life cycle assessment of tunnel structures
T2 - SBE 2022 Berlin D-A-CH Conference: Built Environment within Planetary Boundaries, sbe22 Berlin 2022
AU - Hopf, Bernhard W.
AU - Hoxha, Endrit
AU - Scherz, Marco
AU - Heichinger, Harald
AU - Kreiner, Helmuth
AU - Passer, Alexander
N1 - Funding Information:
The analysis and results described in this paper relate to ongoing research within the international project HERMES, which focuses on emission reduction potential and management strategies for urban road systems (https://jpi-urbaneurope.eu/project/hermes). The Austrian contribution is financially supported via the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) Grant #870294.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Institute of Physics Publishing. All rights reserved.
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - One important measure to combat progressing climate change is compliance with and under no circumstances to exceed the decreasing greenhouse gas budget. Every economic sector must strive to make its ecological contribution to achieve this objective. The construction sector is largely responsible for these negative environmental burdens. Although tunnels are considered to have extensive energy and material consumptions the literature has failed to present their environmental impacts. Aimed at this knowledge gap, the objective of this study is to present the life cycle assessment (LCA) of a tunnel construction project situated in Bulgaria. The study analyzes the impacts of the New Austrian Tunnelling Method (NATM) using the case study "Modernization of Railway Section Elin Pelin-Kostenets - Lot 3". Moreover, by applying dominance and sensitivity analyses, the environmental drivers and optimization potential for reducing greenhouse gas emissions are identified. The results show that steel, shotcrete, and concrete, contribute the most to the global warming potential indicator and are responsible for 85% of this. Furthermore, the life cycle stages for the production of materials and components have a share close to 85 % of the total global warming potential. These findings may help future tunnelling construction projects to improve the environmental performance and thus to combat the alarming development of climate change.
AB - One important measure to combat progressing climate change is compliance with and under no circumstances to exceed the decreasing greenhouse gas budget. Every economic sector must strive to make its ecological contribution to achieve this objective. The construction sector is largely responsible for these negative environmental burdens. Although tunnels are considered to have extensive energy and material consumptions the literature has failed to present their environmental impacts. Aimed at this knowledge gap, the objective of this study is to present the life cycle assessment (LCA) of a tunnel construction project situated in Bulgaria. The study analyzes the impacts of the New Austrian Tunnelling Method (NATM) using the case study "Modernization of Railway Section Elin Pelin-Kostenets - Lot 3". Moreover, by applying dominance and sensitivity analyses, the environmental drivers and optimization potential for reducing greenhouse gas emissions are identified. The results show that steel, shotcrete, and concrete, contribute the most to the global warming potential indicator and are responsible for 85% of this. Furthermore, the life cycle stages for the production of materials and components have a share close to 85 % of the total global warming potential. These findings may help future tunnelling construction projects to improve the environmental performance and thus to combat the alarming development of climate change.
KW - case study
KW - GWP
KW - LCA
KW - NATM
KW - New Austrian Tunnelling Method
KW - scenario analyses
KW - tunnel construction
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85139161104&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1088/1755-1315/1078/1/012117
DO - 10.1088/1755-1315/1078/1/012117
M3 - Conference article in Journal
AN - SCOPUS:85139161104
SN - 1755-1307
VL - 1078
JO - IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science
JF - IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science
IS - 1
M1 - 012117
Y2 - 20 September 2022 through 23 September 2022
ER -