Assessment of greenhouse gas emission for the life-cycle of high speed rail

초록

In Korea, the greenhouse (GHG) emission released from the railcar operation accounts for about 2% of total transportation. So, the role of railroad should be considered importantly to decrease the total GHG emission of transportation through the modal shift from road to railroad. Recently, the entire life-cycle impact of railroad in terms of GHG emission has been evaluated to improve continuously the environment of railroad. The purpose of this study was to assess the GHG emission between the infrastructure construction and the operation of high speed rail (HSR) in Korea. Based on the transport performance in passenger-kilometers (pkm) in 2011, the GHG emissions of HSR line were averagely 1.5 g CO2e/pkm for the infrastructure construction and 28.8 g CO2e/pkm for the KTX (Korea Train eXpress) operation. In future, the life-cycle assessment of HSR line will be essential to compare with other transportation modes.