Review on Energy Conservation of Highway Engineering in China

Abstract

Energy cost and conservation have garnered attention all around the world, and China has always strongly supported energy conservation through improving energy efficiency. As a result of rapid development, China is constructing its expressway and highway systems relatively quickly. However, highway engineering is considered as one of the highest energy consumption fields in terms of social total energy cost. As a result of this construction, it is clear that China could benefit from reduced energy costs and conservation improvement. Additionally, China still has much room for improvement in regards to its energy efficiency, especially in highway engineering. This paper summarized literature about highway energy costs and conservation. Topics of focus included pavement surface and base materials, construction machinery selection and working scheme, energy consumption in highway operation, Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), and a selection of other countermeasures that could improve energy conservation. This section concluded with a summary of the achievements from some in-field conference research. Furthermore, this paper introduced a pilot study conducted in central China. The pilot study estimated the energy cost for both old and new plans with some popular energy conservation applications. Results showed that the applications would have some appreciable effects on energy saving. Those estimated results would be compared to the actual energy consumption amounts after the construction is finished and after the first year of operation. Finally, some recommendations were provided which were expected to help improve the general energy efficiency in the highway engineering field of China.