Carbon Footprint of the Rail Infrastructure Construction for High Speed Line in Korea

초록

In Korea, ‘The 2nd National Railroad Network Construction Plan between 2011 to 2020’ has been published to enhance the performance of railroad for the GHG (greenhouse gases) reduction of transport sector. So, it is necessary to manage GHG emissions considering life-cycle from rail infrastructure construction. Generally, the GHG emission sources of construction sector were the energy consumption of heavy equipments and the use of materials. The purpose of this study was to assess carbon footprint including both heavy equipments and materials from the construction of high speed rail line in Korea. Target line was the new constructed line of 185 km from Osong to Gwangju. The cut-off level of GHG emission sources in this study was above 90% based on the cost of construction. This carbon footprint accounted the amount of CO2-equivalents (CO2e) including CO2, N2O and CH4 according to the IPCC guideline. The total amount of GHG emission was about 3 759 thousands tCO2e, which was resulted from 80-100% of construction materials and 0-20% of heavy equipments. Among the construction sectors of rail infrastructure, civil engineering works took more than 90% of total GHG emission and main sources were cement, ready-mixed concrete and steel. Based on the length of high speed line in kilometer (km), specific GHG emission was about 20 321 tCO2e/km. Using these results, the reduction strategies of GHG emission for rail infrastructure construction can be planned to increase continuously railroad’s competiveness as a low-carbon transport mode in future.