Author: Tewodros Dugasa Gebre
Supervisor: Professor Augusto Cannone Falchetto
Advisors: Dr.-Ing. Di Wang (Aalto), Noora Eklöf, MSc. (Ramboll Finland Oy)
Funding: Ramboll Finland Oy
http://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:aalto-202306184098
Abstract
The phases of road construction, operation, and maintenance are accompanied by significant emissions from the material production, construction and maintenance works, and vehicles using the infrastructure. Hence, the concept of Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) is quite important for the road infrastructure industry. Numerous tools are used to adopt the comprehensive methodologies of LCA and develop informed and efficient decisions for better measurement, interpretation, and reduction of emissions. Despite the availability of tools used for LCA in the road sector in Finland, no comprehensive study has been made to evaluate, compare, and contrast them. Therefore, this thesis studied LCA tools, namely, ZEROInfra and FuelSave, used by Ramboll Finland Oy, developed for road construction and operation purposes, respectively, by taking a road project in Finland as a case study. It also investigated the possibility of merging them into one platform, which can serve both phases altogether. Furthermore, Klimatkalkyl from Sweden and VegLCA from Norway, which already cover a wide range of LCA phases, are also included to compare estimations of environmental impacts from the product and construction phases of LCA. The emissions from vehicles’ operation were evaluated using FuelSave.
A selected road project in Helsinki, Finland, was used as a case study to assess and compare the quantitative emission results from the tools among the outputs of ZEROInfra, Klimatkalkyl and VegLCA. The study also qualitatively investigated and compared the tools’ features, including, but not limited to, user interface, calculation accuracy, and data output. It further involved insights into the limitations of each LCA tool used by Ramboll Finland Oy and identified potential areas for improvement so that the same can be considered while merging the tools.
The cost estimation spreadsheet exported from the infrastructure cost management system, Ihku, was used as initial data to select the items included in the system boundary. Only the items that can be analyzed in all tools for the product and construction phases were selected. The quantitative analysis revealed that the environmental impacts calculated by ZEROInfra, VegLCA, and Klimatkalkyl were 2,524-ton CO2 eq, 2,445-ton CO2 eq and 2,546-ton CO2 eq, respectively. These values show that with the same system boundary and transport distance of materials assumed, the tools produced equivalent total emission calculations. However, the calculation results for each component of the system boundary differed due to various factors, such as the aggregation of work items to fit into the input features of the tools and differences in material property assumptions considered by each tool. Furthermore, the qualitative comparison showed that the software tools differed in features, life cycle phases covered, database, user interface, data input/output, and data analysis and interpretation.
The environmental impact from the vehicle operation was performed using FuelSave. The result showed that for an analysis period of 20 years, the emission from the vehicles’ operation was 123,714-ton CO2. The results also presented the relationship between the geometry and speed of vehicles with fuel consumption and environmental impact. The large amount of emissions obtained from this phase of LCA shows that vehicle operation of a road has more environmental impact than the material extraction, transport and installation during the product and construction phases.
It was found out that the merging of ZEROInfra and FuelSave should consider the improvements of the limitations of each tool. Further considerations to the inclusion of broader LCA phases, impact categories, energy computation, and infrastructure types were recommended. Quality of data importation/exportation and BIM integration were also features that were found critical in the process of merging the tools.
Keywords: Life cycle assessment tools, LCA, construction phase, use phase, ZEROInfra, FuelSave, VegLCA, Kliamatkalkyl