Abstract
Successful decarbonisation of the supply chains for buildings and infrastructure, including the production of basic materials, will involve the pursuit - in parallel – of measures to ensure circularity of material flows, measures to improve material efficiency, and to radically reduce CO2 emissions from basic materials production. Emphasis in this work has been on how “intangible” factors such as implicit or explicit constraints within organisations, inadequate communication between actors in the supply chain, overly conservative norms or lack of information, hinder the realisation of the current carbon mitigation potential. Although this work draw primarily from experiences in Sweden and other developed economies we believe the focus on innovations in the policy arena and efforts to develop new ways of co-operating, coordinating and sharing information between actors (SDG17) and on practices and processes that could enable more sustainable resource use in infrastructure construction may be of relevance also elsewhere. Not the least, since there are still many regions of the world where much of the infrastructure to provide basic services remains to be built (SDG6-7, SDG9, SDG11) a challenge that must be handled in parallel with efforts to reduce/erase the climate impact from infrastructure construction (in line with the Paris Agreement and SDG13).
Highlights
Recent estimates suggest that the construction sector accounts for nearly one quarter of global CO2 emissions [1]
Inspired by the international examples identified in the Impres project [3], the evaluation report highlights the importance of cooperation among stakeholders to comply with the climate requirements, recommends investments in specific pilot projects to drive innovations for reduced carbon emissions and proposes that functional reduction requirements are complemented with more targeted requirements for specific materials or components
The importance of using a combination of measures, including carbon pricing, subsidies and climate requirements in procurement [11] to incentivise emission reductions related to the production, supply, and use of materials in transport infrastructure construction are slowly beginning to take root
Summary
Recent estimates suggest that the construction sector accounts for nearly one quarter of global CO2 emissions [1]. The discussion builds on and synthesizes earlier studies on carbon abatement opportunities, technologies and organisational strategies across important supply chains of infrastructure construction projects [25]. Rootzén and Johnsson [2] and Karlsson et al [4] combine quantitative analysis methods, including scenarios and stylised models, with participatory processes involving relevant stakeholders in the assessment process as to identify and analyse measures, policies and key decision points required to achieve net-zero emissions. As transport infrastructure projects typically have to fulfil multiple sub-goals (cost efficiency, safety, sustainability) and are technically and organisationally complex, the ambition has not been to provide an all-encompassing account of opportunities and barriers but rather to highlight hot spots where a lack of alignment between strategies and organisational resources combined with poor communication and co-ordination between actors, tends to hinder measures to reduce emissions. We discuss barriers to a selection of specific measures to reduce the climate impact from material use
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