Consideration of greenhouse warming potential in infrastructure planning

Sustainability is getting more and more important also in the construction industry. In the past many research projects focused on sustainability of buildings but not of infrastructure projects and related structures. To understand the greenhouse warming potential of infrastructures, we have calculated the CO₂-Equivalents (CO₂E) of production processes of road, bridges and tunnels and additionally the traffic induced emissions for a free traffic flow for an example with different alignment options. The effect of longitudinal gradients, cross sections and construction methods have been considered. To allow a better understanding of the relevance of CO₂Eemissions of construction processes, the CO₂E-emissions have been evaluatedmonetarily. Initial results show a small influence of CO₂E-emission costs of production processes in comparison to life cycle costs. But alignment options that would result in fewer emissions (global impact) may have a negative impact on the local environment. Higher costs for compensation of encroachments upon nature resulting therefrom compete with reduced emissions and fuel over the whole life-cycle.