Carbon footprint of heavy machinery in paving construction processes

Abstract

Climate change is a current phenomenon and represents one of the most important environmental, social and economic threats to the planet and is defined as a significant and lasting change in local and global weather patterns caused by natural or human-caused global warming. The construction of works related to earthworks such as paving of streets, parking lots, roads, highways, dams, canals, among others, generate pollution because they use heavy machinery which is a major consumer of non-renewable fossil fuels that are transformed into emissions of Carbon Dioxide (CO2). The present work, takes as a case study the paving of a subdivision in the City of Obregon Sonora (Mexico) to determine the carbon footprint in Kg of CO2eq/m2 generated in the machinery, using the methodology of the carbon footprint from the quantities of work of the construction process, the selection and hourly performance of the appropriate equipment, the determination of the volumes of fuel used and the emission factor in Kg-CO2eq for the fuel used. The results obtained were 165,742.02 Kg-CO2eq in a surface of 128,049.59 m2 of paving, equivalent to 1.29 Kg-CO2eq/m2.