Implementation of

life cycle thinking in

planning and

procurement

Susanna Toller

2 2017-04-17

Comparison USA-Sweden (latitude and scale) 98.500 km of state roads

14.000 km of state owned railway line

3 2017-04-17

How can we achieve a transport infrastructure that meets

the goal for GHG emissions (0 net emissions by 2050 and

15% decrease in GHG by 2020)?

4 2017-04-17

The importance of applying a life cycle perspective

GHG emission from material in

road construction

0.00E+00

5.00E-02

1.00E-01

1.50E-01

2.00E-01

2.50E-01

3.00E-01

Road Rail

On-site activities

Material production

New construction of state owned

roads and railways in Sweden 2015,

cradle to gate (Mton CO2/year)

Liljenström, Toller, Åkerman and Björklund

2017, Royal institute of Technology (KTH)

Environmental assessment of the Swedish national

transport plan 2014-2025 (2013)

5 2017-04-17

• LCA can support decisions at different system levels and in different stages within the

planning process

• LCA can be performed as a case study that is generalised, or it can be applied to

each specific project

– But if we want to create incentives for innovative solutions, avoid sub-opimisation, and

enable more accurate follow up, life cycle thinking needs to be implemented in each project

From having life cycle knowledge to practice

life cycle thinking

Life cycle assessment for the green procurement of roads: a way forward

(Butt, Toller and Birgisson 2015). Journal of Cleaner production

Project

Network

Material

Early planning Planning/design Construction

High data availabilityIncreased precisenessComparability is needed

Low data availability, High uncertainties”Hot spots” can be identified

6 2017-04-17

• A model that enables us to efficiently and consistently calculate life cycle

energy use and greenhouse gas emissions from transport infrastructure

• Easy to use – no expert competence and no data inventory is needed (default

values are provided)

• It can be applied for different purposes – identify improvement measures,

define requirements and follow up

• A unique design, can be used in both early planning and in later stages, and it

can be applied on different system levels

• Energy use and greenhouse gas emissions are calculated based

– Use of resources (default or project specific)

– Backround LCA data (default or product specific)

The climate calculation model ”Klimatkalkyl”

Construction Maintenance/

operationReinvestments/

demolition

Planning Design

7 2017-04-17

• Pay items are the building blocks

• The precision increases as more information about the specific project

is available (going from default values to project specific values)

Implementation in planning and procurement

Emission factors for

material and energy

resources

Material and energy

resourcesComponents

Standard measures

Project-specific input data

Results for the project

8 2017-04-17

Strategic planning ConstructionDesignPlanning phase

Implementation in planning and procurement

• The climate calculation follows the project from early planning to

finalized construction

First

baselineUpdated

baselineUpdated

baseline

Updated

baseline

Final

declaration

9 2017-04-17

Example: LCA-based assessment of suggested projects within the

Swedish transport plan 2014-2025

0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

0.6

0.7

1 5 9 13 17 21 25 29 33 37 41 45 49 53 57 61 65 69 73 77 81 85 89 93 97 101105109113117121125129133137141

Mto

nC

arb

on

dio

xid

eeq

uiv

alen

ts

Green house gas emissions from suggested projects(total 3.8 million ton CO2 eqv.)

Project number

10 2017-04-17

Example: Improving climate performance

within planning, example East Link

Project

• Sweden’s first high-speed railway for trains running up

to 320 km per hour

• Supplementary investigation on alternative routes

through Linköping

Construction Maintenance Operation Total

11 2017-04-17

• A new route for the European highway (E4) passing Stockholm

• 18 km out of 21 km of the link are tunnels

• 10% reduction of emissions were achieved:

– Reduced amount of concrete and reinforcing bars

– Reduced amount of diesel

– Concrete with less emissions

– Reinforcing bars with less emissions

– Construction steel with less emissions

Improving climate performance through requirements in

procurement, example E4 Stockholm bypass

12 2017-04-17

Further work

• Climate requirements on maintenance contracts for a region

• Better coverage of material transportation

• Utilise the possibilities for exchange of data with other system

• Possibilies to include project specific data on future reinvestments

and maintenance – method for verification is needed!

• Cover the interaction material-traffic

13 2017-04-17

Summary

• Life cycle thinking is necessary in order to meet our

environmental goals, and it needs to be applied to

projects on a broad scale (not only as case study

knowledge)

• Methodological choices needs to be clearly defined

and consistently applied for the different types of

decision situations

• Through our climate calculation model, life cycle

thinking is now implemented in all our larger

projects, and used both in planning and procurement