Environmental Impact Assessment Review: Abhishek Chaudhary, Amaan Akhtar
Environmental Impact Assessment Review: Abhishek Chaudhary, Amaan Akhtar
Environmental Impact Assessment Review: Abhishek Chaudhary, Amaan Akhtar
A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T
Keywords: The road sector is one of the basic pillars for national economic growth owing to its role in movement of goods
LCA and people and can contribute positively towards several sustainable development goals (SDGs). On the other
Roads hand, road construction using conventional methods can jeopardize the global progress towards climate action
Climate change
and other environmental related SDGs owing to large raw material requirements, fuel demand and pollution
Environment
Footprint
associated with it. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a useful quantitative tool to figure out which products and
Sustainable development processes are responsible for majority of road’s environmental impact at different stages. This information can
then be used to design interventions and adopt alternative materials for improving the environmental profile of
roads. However, the application of LCA in road sector in developing countries such as India has been limited
owing to unavailability of funds to compile information regarding quantities of all materials used (inventory
data) and their environmental characterization factors. Here we present a new approach that connects the
publicly available road’s bill of quantity (BOQ) and analysis of rates (AOR) documents with national construction
materials environmental footprint database to calculate the road footprint. A case study on calculating the
environmental impacts of a recently built 43 km state highway road in the Indian state of Gujarat is presented to
demonstrate the steps involved in the new approach. The environmental impacts per kilometre of the road
section came out to be 6.86 million MJ energy use, 281 tons CO2eq. GHG emissions, 0.013 kg CFC-11 eq. ozone
depletion, 2.16 tons SO2eq. acidification, 0.35 tons PO4eq. eutrophication and 0.11 tons ethene eq. of photo
chemical oxidant formation. Among all life cycle phases, the material production stage contributes the highest to
the total environmental footprint of the road section. Of the 52 materials used, bitumen, diesel, coarse/fine
aggregate, galvanized iron (GI) pipe, concrete, thermoplastic paint used in road markings and steel corrugated
sheet and channel post are responsible for majority of impacts. The template presented can be used in India and
other developing countries to evaluate the environmental footprint of existing and future road projects.
1. Introduction accounts for 42% (IEA, 2021). Out of this, road development accounts
for around 10% of the total GHG emission due to the transport sector
A resilient road infrastructure plays a vital role in the economic and (IEA, 2021).
social development and can contribute positively towards multiple
sustainable development goals of a country (Wenz et al., 2020; Ruiz and
1.1. Importance of Indian road sector for global environment
Guevara, 2020). However, laying down new roadway pavements or
maintenance of existing roads is a resource intensive activity resulting in
In economically developing countries, a large amount of road con
environmental damage through greenhouse gas emissions, air and water
struction will take place over the next decade to handle increasing
pollution, land degradation and consequent biodiversity loss in the re
passenger and freight traffic which if carried out unsustainably will have
gion etc. (Mohapatra et al., 2023; Chaudhary et al., 2022; Shrivastava
disastrous consequences for the local, regional as well as global envi
et al., 2013). The transport sector accounted for around 23% of global
ronment (Aryan et al., 2023a). India is a particularly important country
greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions globally in 2013 and 30% of overall
in this regard as it is anticipating a high number of road projects in near
energy consumption, after the power and heat generation sector, which
future owing to its 1.4 billion population and vast size. Currently India
* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: abhishekc@iitk.ac.in (A. Chaudhary).
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eiar.2024.107477
Received 4 April 2023; Received in revised form 20 February 2024; Accepted 22 February 2024
Available online 26 February 2024
0195-9255/© 2024 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
A. Chaudhary and A. Akhtar Environmental Impact Assessment Review 106 (2024) 107477
has the second-largest road network in the world of about 6.2 million km the impacts of Indian roads on different domains of the environment (e.
after the United States of America which has a road network of 6.645 g., air pollution, water pollution, human health etc.) because majority of
million km. (MORTH, 2021a). Rural roads account for majority (around existing studies only considered GHG emissions or embodied energy as
70%, ~4.2 million km) of Indian road network while state and national indicators of environmental impact due to ease of availability of their
highways account for just 5%. Over the 2000–2015 period, India’s GDP characterization (emission) factors (Singh et al., 2024; Singh et al.,
increased by 150% and population increased by 30% and in the same 2023; Choudhary et al., 2021). Further, the past studies on roads only
period, India’s national highway network length has nearly doubled to accounted for the environmental impacts due to the construction ma
around 1,00,000 km (Nenavath, 2023; Chakrabarti, 2018). Already, terials used in bulk (e.g., aggregates, bitumen, diesel) and do not add up
road development and vehicular movement is responsible for around the impacts caused by other materials used in lesser quantities but with
161 million metric tonnes of GHG emissions annually in India (Sreedhar potential high per unit impacts on the environment, leading to under
et al., 2016). Under the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways and estimation of road’s total environmental footprint (Kar et al., 2015;
the Ministry of Rural Development, the Government of India has initi ADB, 2010). For example, Singh et al. (2020) found that the GHG
ated several new highway and rural road development projects emissions and embodied energy for pervious concrete pavement (PCP)
(MORTH, 2021b). All of this can jeopardize India’s climate and envi are ~4% lower than those of the traditional Portland cement concrete
ronmental sustainability goals (Aryan et al., 2023b; Ramachandra et al., pavement (PCCP) system. TERI (2017) demonstrated that road built
2015; The World Bank, 2011). using hot-mix technology (where the bitumen is heated on-site) has
The road development activities use a large amount of construction higher carbon and energy footprint than built using cold-mix technology
materials along with heavy construction machinery and equipment in where pre-mix is prepared under controlled conditions using modern
each stage. Starting with mining to extract raw materials from ground, technology (TERI, 2017). Both these studies used only carbon and en
their processing in factories, transporting them from factories to retail ergy footprints as indicators of environmental impact and both consid
and then to road construction site, the use of equipment on site for ered the impacts due to a limited number of materials (e.g., aggregates,
earthmoving activities and laying down different layers of road pave cement) only while ignoring the impacts due to dozens of other mate
ment - all contribute to GHG emissions and negative impact on other rials used in the road section, thereby underestimating the true extent of
domains of the environment (Huang et al., 2024; Barbhuiya and Das, environmental damage done by the project.
2023; Li et al., 2020). A first step in transition towards greener and The reason for this is the often unavailability of detailed materials
sustainable road construction practices is to be able to quantify how inventory data specific to project as well as environmental character
much environmental damage is being done due to current practices in ization factors for all road materials specific to India. This means that
each construction stage due to each material and process. comprehensive quantitative information on environmental impact of
individual item works (site clearance, earthwork, sub-bases, surface
1.2. Use of LCA tool for road environmental impact assessment course, shoulders, superstructure etc.) and materials is not available for
Indian road projects.
Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a popular tool to estimate the envi
ronmental impact of a product or infrastructure project in each phase of 1.3. Objective and scope
its life cycle starting from the raw material extraction (cradle) to the end
of life (grave) (Del Rosario and Traverso, 2023; Osorio-Tejada et al., The objective of this study is to fill the above research gaps by pre
2022; Larrey-Lassalle et al., 2017; Jang et al., 2015; ISO, 2006). Studies senting a novel approach to obtain the detailed inventory (also called
on the LCA of road infrastructure goes back to the 1990s but most have bill of materials, BOM) data for a road project by combining bill of
been conducted in the high-income countries such in North America, quantity (BOQ) document of the road section (containing list and
Europe, and China (Huang et al., 2024; Suwarto et al., 2023; Picardo quantities of individual item works for a project) with publicly available
et al., 2023; Patel and Ruparathna, 2023; Hoxha et al., 2021; Chen et al., analysis of rates (AOR) document (containing quantities of different
2017). The reason is that substantial financial expenses are involved in road materials used in each item work). Next, the resulting bill of ma
collecting detailed data on amounts of materials and processes involved terials (BOM) data is connected with recently available database on
in road construction (inventory) and the environmental footprints of environmental characterization factors of Indian construction materials
individual materials and processes (characterization factors) (Aryan (ICD, 2017) to obtain the life cycle environmental footprint of road
et al., 2023a). section. Fig. 1 summarizes the approach proposed in this study. We
Little is known about the life cycle environmental impacts of road demonstrate the steps involved in the new approach through a case
infrastructure in developing countries such as India (Aryan et al., study. Through this approach, future studies can obtain the full in
2023b). Sreedhar et al. (2016) demonstrated an LCA study to calculate ventory (amounts of all materials) of any road project and link it with
the carbon footprints of the different pavement systems used in highway the characterization factors to find out total environmental footprint of
construction in India. They showed that the total carbon footprint of the road project.
rigid pavement made using Portland Cement Concrete (PCC) was about
25% higher than the flexible pavement made using bituminous (asphalt) 2. Materials and methods
concrete. However, the inventory (or bill of quantity, BOQ) data for
various construction processes (i.e., amounts of different materials used 2.1. Case study for demonstrating new approach
in each stage) and the carbon characterization factors for construction
materials (e.g., kgCO2e/kg cement, bitumen, coarse aggregates etc.) The case study road section is situated along the state highway no.
were representative of other countries and not India (Stripple, 2011; 145 between the towns Dhansura and Meghraj (Length = 43.357 km) in
White et al., 2010). the Aravalli district of western state of Gujarat in India. The width of
Having country-specific characterization factors and inventory data carriageway is 7 m for the road section meaning the total area of road is
is important to get accurate results because the material production 303,499 m2 (see Supplementary Fig. S1 for the cross-section view of the
processes, electricity mix, and other technological parameters vary road). Being a government funded project, the bill of quantities (BOQ)
widely depending upon the country. Using data representative of some for construction and upgradation of this road section was publicly
other country can over or underestimate the environmental impact of available and was downloaded from the Gujarat State Highway Project
Indian road project. website (GSHP, 2018).
In addition to a lack of availability of country-specific characteriza The BOQ contains the quantities of following 12 broad item work
tion factors, there exist several other research gaps in our quantifying categories: Site clearance and dismantling; Earth works, Foundations;
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A. Chaudhary and A. Akhtar Environmental Impact Assessment Review 106 (2024) 107477
Fig. 1. Flowchart describing the approach proposed in this study to calculate the life cycle environmental footprint of any road section in India.
Sub-bases, bases (non-bituminous) and shoulders; Bases and bituminous modules B1-B5 (road maintenance), B6-B8 (the use stage relating to
surface courses; Traffic signs, markings, and other road appurtenances; operation of road), C1-C5 (the end-of-life stage and relandscaping) and
Pipe culverts; Horticulture; Sub-structure; Super structure; River module D (net benefits from reuse, recycling, and energy recovery
training and protection works; Repair and rehabilitation works. Each beyond the system boundary).
broad item work contains several sub-item works (197 in total, see The second step in LCA is life cycle inventory data compilation which
Supplementary Table S1 for detailed BOQ of the road). To calculate the entails obtaining the amounts of all materials used in road construction
environmental footprint of road section, we followed a life cycle in different stages (described in Section 2.2 below). The third step is life
assessment (LCA) approach (ISO, 2006; AzariJafari et al., 2016; Jiang cycle impact assessment where the inventory is multiplied with so called
and Wu, 2019). characterization factors (environmental impact per unit material) to
The first step in conducting LCA is defining the functional unit and calculate the impact of the road section on different environmental
‘Goal and Scope’. Our functional unit was construction of one km of this domains such as climate, air, water etc. (ISO, 2006). The sources used
national highway road section, and the goal was to calculate its impact for obtaining characterization factors are described in Section 2.3 while
on the environment. We also present the environmental impact results the impact assessment stage is described in Section 2.4 below. The
for the full 43.357 km section of the road in supplementary information fourth and final step of LCA is interpretation of results (described in
obtained by simply multiplying the impacts per km by 43.357. The scope Section 2.5 below).
(system boundary) of this LCA was ‘cradle to construction’ (i.e., cradle to
laid) and impacts occurring during following three stages were
accounted for in this study: (a) road construction materials production 2.2. Converting bill of quantity to bill of materials (inventory collection)
stage that includes impacts occurring during extraction of raw materials
from the ground (e.g. during limestone mining), their transportation to We derive the bill of materials (BOM) data for each item work listed
factory (e.g. impacts due to diesel use in trucks during limestone in the road’s bill of quantity (BOQ) by looking up the item works in the
transportation from mining site to the cement factory), and during official analysis of rates (AOR) document published by the Indian road
manufacturing processes in factory (e.g., electricity use while converting congress (IRC, 2019). This is the major methodological advancement
limestone into cement in factory through machines and equipments), (b) presented in this study over past literature. For each item work, the AOR
transportation stage where manufactured road materials (e.g., cement) contains the amounts of individual road materials (such as soil, bitumen,
are brought to road construction site and cause harm to the environment cement, brick etc.) and machinery needed to construct it. The amount of
(e.g., through diesel use in transportation trucks), and (c) on-site con diesel consumed by on-site construction machinery for carrying out
struction stage where impacts occur due to machinery used in site different item works was obtained from construction agency in charge of
clearance, earthwork, sub-bases/bases, sub structure etc. Due to non- the project. See Supplementary Table S2 for the calculated amounts of
availability of data, we could not calculate the impacts during the 52 different materials used in the project for all item works (also called
operation, maintenance and end of life stages of road’s life cycle. bill of materials or BOM).
Relating our study to the designations of the life cycle phases (called For instance, the road’s BOQ document tells that a total of four
modules) proposed in the current ISO 21931-2 framework for methods drainage spouts (sub-item work) were installed during the on-site con
of assessment of the environmental and sustainability performance of struction of Super Structure item work of this road (Supplementary
construction works (ISO, ISO 21931-2, 2019), we include the impacts Table S1). The road analysis of rates (AOR) document (IRC, 2019) tells
occurring during modules A1 (raw material extraction), A2 (transport of that the manufacturing of one drainage spout requires four kg of
raw materials to construction material manufacturing factory), A3 corrosion resistant structural steel, six meters of galvanized iron pipe
(construction material manufacturing at factory), A4 (transport of ma (100 mm diameter), six galvanized iron bolts (10 mm diameter) and two
terials to road construction site), and A5 (all processes during con galvanized mild steel flat clamps (Table 1).
struction of road). We did not include the impacts occurring in the Therefore, the bill of material (BOM) for this item work (drainage
spout) in the road is obtained by simply multiplying these quantities
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A. Chaudhary and A. Akhtar Environmental Impact Assessment Review 106 (2024) 107477
Table 1
Demonstration of procedure to derive road bill of materials (BOM) by combining bill of quantity (BOQ) data with analysis of rates (AOR) document. The BOQ
document tells that four drainage spouts (sub-item work) need to be installed while preparing Super Structure (broad item work) of the road. Now the AOR document
tells that which materials (and their amounts) are needed to be installed for each drainage spout. The BOM (last column) is obtained by multiplying sub-item work
amount listed in road BOQ document (a) with material amounts listed in AOR document for this item-work (b). Same procedure was followed for converting all 197
sub-item work quantities into material amounts (see Supplementary Table S2).
Broad item Sub-item Sub-item work quantity Materials used in installing item Quantity of materials used per unit sub- Total material used in sub-item
work work from BOQ (a) work from AOR item work from AOR (b) work BOM = (a) × (b)
with four as demonstrated in Table 1. where Id is the total environmental impact of the road section on domain
d (e.g., acidification potential in kg SO2 eq.); Am is the total amount of
2.3. Environmental and energy characterization factors per road material material m used in road life cycle (Supplementary Table S2); n = 52 is
the number of materials used in road construction and CFm,d is the
The characterization factors (CFs) representing environmental
characterization factor of material m for environmental domain d (e.g.
impact per unit of a road material were obtained from recently available
kg SO2 eq./kg cement; Supplementary Table S3).
Indian construction materials database (ICMD) developed for the Indian
The absolute environmental impact numbers (Id in Eq. (1)) calcu
Eco-cities program funded by International Finance Corporation (World
lated above do not reveal the severity of road section construction
Bank Group) and European Union (ICD, 2017). The CFs in the ICMD
impact on different environmental domains because the numbers are in
database are based on the CML–IA version 4.1 life cycle impact assess
different units (e.g., GWP is in kg CO2 eq. while AP is in kg SO2 eq.) and
ment method (CML, 2016) considering India-specific manufacturing
thus making the comparison difficult. To address this issue, within LCA,
processes.
the individual environmental impacts (Id in Eq. (1)) on a domain are
A set of six CFs are available for each material representing per unit
divided by so called normalization factors (NFd ) to get dimensionless
impacts on six domains of the environment as shown in Table 2. Sup
normalized environmental impacts (NId ) (Eq. (2)):
plementary Table S3 shows all road materials and their characterization
factors. Unlike past studies considering only energy use and GHG NI d =
Id
(2)
emissions of road materials, calculating the impact on six different do NF d
mains provides a more comprehensive picture of the damage done to the The normalization factors for each domain (NFd ) are shown in
environment and enables identification of trade-offs across domains. Table 2 and they were imported from the same source as the charac
terization factors which are based on the CML life cycle impact assess
2.4. Life cycle impact assessment of road section ment methodology (Guinée et al., 2001). These normalization factors
represent the total cumulative impact of all processes occurring in the
In this step, we multiplied the respective characterization factors of world in a particular year on that environmental domain (Guinée et al.,
each road material with their total amounts used in construction of road 2001; Hischier et al., 2010; Crenna et al., 2019).
section and summed up across all materials to get the total environ Since the normalized environmental impacts in each domain vary
mental impact of the road (Eq. (1)). from 0 to 1 now, this enables one to find out which impact category is
∑
n more severely affected due to road construction than others. The
Id = Am × CF m,d (1) normalized impacts therefore represent the magnitude of the contribu
tion by the road construction towards that environmental problem
m=1
globally.
Table 2
Six environmental characterization factors (CFs) used to evaluate the environ 2.5. Results interpretation
mental life cycle impact of road section.* The normalization factors (NF) or each
of the six environmental domains are also shown (see Section 2.4 for details on
In this stage, we identify the hotspots in the life cycle of the road by
NF).
highlighting the materials, item works, and stages that contribute the
Environmental Characterization Normalization NF unit highest to the calculated total environmental footprint of the road. This
domain factor (CF) Unit factor (NF)
information can then be used by stakeholders to devise interventions
Energy use MJ/kg 4.5 × 108 Million and look for alternative greener materials or processes to reduce the
MJ environmental impact of road from base case. We also briefly discuss the
Global warming kg CO2 eq./kg 4.2 × 1010 tons
potential CO2eq.
recent studies that have identified alternative road materials with rela
Ozone depletion kg CFC-11 eq./kg 9.0 × 108 kg CFC- tively lower environmental impacts than the conventional materials (e.
potential eq. g., natural aggregates, cement, bitumen).
Acidification potential kg SO2 eq./kg 3.4 × 108 tons SO2 Both the underlying inventory data for the road section obtained
eq.
from state government’s website (GSHP, 2018) and the country average
Eutrophication kg PO4 eq./kg 1.3 × 108 tons PO4
potential eq. environmental characterization factors obtained from Indian Construc
Photochemical ozone kg ethene eq./kg 0.96 × 108 tons tion Materials Database (ICD, 2017) provide single values for all item
creation potential ethene works and construction materials respectively. In other words, the
eq. confidence intervals around the inventory and characterization factors
*
The six CF values for each road material were obtained from Indian con were not available from our sources. To perform the uncertainty analysis
struction materials database (ICD, 2017). and calculate a range around our mean estimates as a part of the result
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A. Chaudhary and A. Akhtar Environmental Impact Assessment Review 106 (2024) 107477
interpretation step of road LCA, we followed past studies (Huang et al., Table 4
2024) and assumed the amounts of materials used in road construction Calculated environmental impacts per km of the road section occurring at three
to vary by ±5% around their mean values (uniform distribution) and the life cycle stages (cradle to construction). % in parentheses represent the
characterization factors to vary by ±20% around their mean values contribution of each life cycle stage. Supplementary Tables S4-S6 contain
(triangular distribution). We then generated 10,000 Monte Carlo sam detailed calculations of impacts for each stage.
ples from the respective distributions of material amounts and charac Life cycle stage Energy GWP ODP AP EP POCP
terization factors and propagated the uncertainty in these parameters to (Million (Tons (kg (Tons (Tons (Tons
MJ/km) CO2 CFC- SO2 PO4 ethene
the final environmental impact results and calculated the range (mini
eq./ 11 eq./ eq./ eq./ eq./
mum, maximum) around our mean (deterministic) estimates calculated km) km) km) km) km)
above (Eq. (1)).
Material 5.78 190.66 0.003 1.35 0.20 0.0985
production (84%) (68%) (24%) (62%) (58%) (86%)
3. Results stage impacts
Transportation 0.43 39.24 0.0049 0.38 0.07 0.0077
3.1. Absolute and normalized life cycle environmental impact of road stage impacts (6%) (14%) (36%) (18%) (20%) (7%)
On-site 0.66 50.66 0.0053 0.43 0.079 0.0085
section
construction (10%) (18%) (40%) (20%) (23%) (7%)
stage impacts
Table 3 presents the CFs for 15 major materials used in high quan Total impacts/ 6.86 280.56 0.0134 2.16 0.35 0.114
tities for road section construction. The India-specific characterization km
Normalized 15.3 × 6.7 × 1.5 × 6.4 × 2.7 × 1.2 ×
factor (CFs) for all 52 road materials and six environmental domains as
impacts 10− 9 10− 9 10− 11 10− 9 10− 9 10− 9
compiled from Indian Construction Materials Database (ICD, 2017) are
presented in Supplementary Table S3. Multiplying these CFs with cor
responding materials amounts used in road construction and summing 3.2. Environmental impacts due to individual road life cycle stages
up gave us the total absolute environmental footprint of the road section
(Id , Eq. (1)). Interpreting the results, we found that the material production stage
We found that the ‘cradle to construction’ environmental impact due is the hotspot in the road life cycle as it contributes the most to the total
to one km road section (functional unit) amounts to a total 6.86 (range: environmental impact for energy use (84%), GHG emissions (68%),
5.22–8.65), million MJ of energy use 281 (range: 213–354) tons CO2eq. acidification potential (62%), and eutrophication potential (58%) and
greenhouse emissions, 0.013 (range: 0.01–0.017) kg CFC-11 eq. of POCP domains (86%) as shown in Fig. 2.
ozone depletion potential, 2.16 (range: 1.64–2.72) tons SO2eq. of Transportation stage has a relatively high impact on ozone depletion
acidification potential, 0.35 (range: 0.27–0.44) tons PO4eq. of eutro potential domain (~36%) but not on other domains. This is because
phication potential and 0.11 (range: 0.087–0.14) tons ethene eq. of transporting the road materials to the site entails high diesel use and
photochemical oxidant formation potential (Table 4). diesel has relatively high characterization factor for this domain
It is difficult to tell which environmental domain is more severely compared with other road materials (Table 3, Supplementary Table S5).
affected due to road construction compared with others from these ab The third life cycle stage (on-site construction) in this ‘cradle to
solute numbers. We therefore also present the normalized impacts (NId , construction’ LCA of the road is the hotspot for ozone depletion poten
Eq. (2)). From these normalized values, it is clear that the energy use, tial domain (40% contribution) but has relatively much less impact on
global warming and acidification potential domains are relatively more other domains compared with material production stage (10–20%). The
severely impacted due to road construction followed by eutrophication reason here again is high diesel and electricity use on-site for operating
and POCP categories while the impact on the ozone depletion category is heavy equipments and machinery to carry out item works such as site
the least. clearance, earthwork, laying down sub-bases, bases, and surface course
Compared with the eutrophication domain, the road’s impact on for the road (Supplementary Table S6).
energy use domain is ~5 times and on global warming and acidification
potential domains is ~2 times more. Impact on all other domains is
~100 times more than on the ozone depletion. 3.3. Environmental impacts due to individual road materials
The materials contributing the most to the total impact of road for
Table 3
India-specific characterization factors (CFs) for 15 materials used in high quantities for road section construction. CFs represent per unit impact on six environmental
domains. Supplementary Table S3 contains CF values for all 52 road materials.
Road material Unit Energy (MJ/ GWP (kg CO2 eq./ ODP (kg CFC-11 eq./ AP (kg SO2 eq./ EP (kg PO4 eq./ POCP (kg ethene eq./
unit) unit) unit) unit) unit) unit)
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A. Chaudhary and A. Akhtar Environmental Impact Assessment Review 106 (2024) 107477
Fig. 2. Relative (%) contribution of material production, transportation, and on-site construction stages of road’s life cycle stages to its total ‘cradle to construction’
environmental impact.
almost all environmental categories are – bitumen, diesel, coarse and eutrophication potential and up to 75% for ozone depletion po
aggregate, galvanized iron (GI) pipe, fine aggregate, channel post made tential respectively (Fig. 3).
of steel, concrete, hot applied thermoplastic compound used in road Diesel is mainly used during the transportation stage for bringing
markings and corrugated sheet made of steel for use in traffic signage road materials to the road construction site as well as during the on-site
and crash barriers (Fig. 3). However, among these, diesel use is the construction stage for operating equipments and machineries such as
single biggest contributor to the total environmental impact of the road dozer, hydraulic excavator, tipper, tractor-trolley, paver finisher, me
ranging from ~15% for photochemical oxidant creation potential and chanical broom etc. Supplementary Table S4 presents the calculated
energy use to 30% for global warming potential, ~40% for acidification impacts for all 52 materials used in road construction.
Fig. 3. Relative (%) contribution of different materials to the total ‘cradle to construction’ environmental impact of road section. Full results for all 52 materials are
presented in Supplementary Table S4.
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A. Chaudhary and A. Akhtar Environmental Impact Assessment Review 106 (2024) 107477
3.4. Environmental impacts due to individual item works and effort. However, the bill of quantity (BOQ) document for mostly all
road projects is available publicly from the state government website.
Majority of road’s total environmental impact occurs during con Therefore, in this paper we proposed this approach by which anybody
struction of four out total 12 items works (Fig. 4). These are: ‘Sub-bases, with a BOQ can obtain the environmental footprint of project by first
non-bituminous bases and shoulders’ (12–33%), ‘Bases and bituminous converting it into BOM using the analysis of rate (AOR) document that is
surface courses’ (12–65%), ‘Traffic signs, markings and other road ap also publicly available and then connecting it with the characterization
purtenances’ (15–45%), and ‘Earthworks’ (4–33%). factors publicly available from Indian Construction Materials Database.
The item work ‘Site clearance and dismantling’ carried out before the Using our approach anybody can carry out the LCA of any road project in
road construction work starts at the site, contributes between 1 and 5% India once they have the road BOQ.
of total environmental impact of the road section depending upon the
environmental category. The relative impact of other seven item works 4.1. Road sector and SDGs
are negligible (<2% of total impact of road) relative to above five major
item works. Supplementary Table S7 shows the calculated impacts for High number of road construction projects are currently underway,
all item works used in road construction. and more are expected in near future in developing countries to meet the
The major road materials contributing the most to the total envi demands of ever-increasing population with rising income levels. On the
ronmental impact of individual item works are presented Table 5 (see one hand, the road sector is the basic pillar for movement of goods and
Supplementary Table S8 for detailed list). people across the country and is fundamental to the national economic
For example, almost all the environmental impact occurring during growth and progress towards sustainable development goals (SDGs) (see
the ‘Site clearance’ and ‘Earthworks’ is due to on-site burning of around review by Kumar, 2019). Investment in road sector can reduce injuries
0.3 million litres of diesel during the operation of different machinery and deaths from road traffic accidents while creating jobs and increase
such as dozer, tractor-trolley, hydraulic excavator, tipper truck, vibra people’s access to markets, health care, educational institutes, and
tory trolly, water tanker etc. to dismantle existing structures, clearing technology (Starkey and Hine, 2014). This in turn can improve earning
the site and manoeuvring soil for the earthwork done before the road can opportunities, health/education outcomes, food security and therefore
be laid out (Supplementary Table S6). While carrying out ‘sub-bases and aid in progress towards SDG 1 (No Poverty), SDG 3 (Good health and
shoulder’ and ‘bases and surface courses’ item works, the use of coarse well-being), SDG 4 (Quality Education), SDG 8 (Good jobs and economic
aggregates, fine aggregates and bitumen is responsible for majority of growth), SDG 9 (Innovation and Infrastructure) and SDG 11 (Sustainable
environmental footprint (Table 5, Supplementary Table S8). cities and communities).
On the other hand, as revealed by our analysis here, the environ
4. Discussion mental footprint of road construction can be substantial, jeopardizing
the achievement of environment related SDGs by 2030. There is a
Note that often the agency or organization carrying out the road particular increased international interest in road construction sector of
construction is different from the organization (e.g., academicians) developing world because of the concern that large amounts of energy
carrying out the life cycle environmental impact assessment and there and material intensive road construction can have disastrous conse
fore the bill of materials (BOM) with detailed material quantities is quences not only for local but also global environment through
usually either not available to the latter at all or requires them to reach increased GHG emissions, air pollution or increased resource scarcity,
out to the construction agency to obtain them, which entails a lot of time leading to climate change and many other negative cross-border
Fig. 4. Relative (%) contribution of 12 broad item works to the total ‘cradle to construction’ environmental impact of road section. Full results for all item works are
presented in Supplementary Table S7.
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A. Chaudhary and A. Akhtar Environmental Impact Assessment Review 106 (2024) 107477
Table 5
For each of the 12 item works, the materials contributing the most to the total impact are shown (in %). Supplementary Table S8 contains the full list of % contribution
of all materials per item-work.
Item work Road material %MJ %GWP %ODP %AP %EP %POCP
cascading effects jeopardizing environmental related global SDGs. causing damage to human health and plants.
The energy use associated with manufacturing of road materials
needs to be brought down if country wants to progress on SDG#7
(Improvement in energy efficiency). High global warming potential 4.2. Environmental impact reduction solutions for road sector
(~281 tons CO2eq./km, Table 4) of road construction reflects high
anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in atmosphere which We identified the hotspots in the road’s life cycle and found that
enhances the heat radiation absorption and contributes towards Earth’s carrying out the item works ‘Sub-bases, non-bituminous bases, and
temperature increase leading to cascading negative consequences on shoulders’, ‘Bases and surface bituminous courses’ and ‘Traffic signs,
humans, biodiversity, and ecosystem functioning. This directly affects markings and other appurtenances’ cause high environmental impacts
progress towards SDG 13 (Climate Action) and India’s commitment to primarily due to the use of large amounts of natural aggregate, cement,
Paris Climate agreement. concrete, steel bars, paint and aluminium sections.
We found that the ozone depletion potential associated with road To reduce the environmental impact, future road projects can
construction is relatively small compared with other five environmental explore the use of alternative green materials or eco-labelled materials
domains (Table 4). This reflects relatively lower emissions of halogen (Essaghouri et al., 2023; Balaguera et al., 2018), circular construction
compounds or chlorofluorocarbons and thus lower risk of damage to the principles (Wuni, 2022; Hou et al., 2021) and sustainable construction
stratospheric ozone layer that protects the biochemical cycles, humans, project management practices (Manosalvas-Paredes et al., 2019). Many
and life of Earth from harmful ultraviolet rays coming from the sun. The studies have reported environmental savings (in %) that can result from
acidification potential of the road means the release of pollutants such as replacing one ton of natural aggregates, cement, or asphalt with alter
acidifying oxides of sulphur and nitrogen in air that come down on Earth native green materials. Replacing natural aggregates used in road pro
causing negative effects on aquatic life, soil, plants, and buildings. This jects with the aggregates recycled from construction and demolition
in turn has adverse effects on human health and progress towards SDG 3 waste of other projects can lead to a 66% savings on GHG emissions,
(Good health and well-being). 55% savings on ODP and EP, 75% savings on POCP, 25% savings on AP
The eutrophication potential (0.35 tons PO4 eq./km) associated with and 18% savings on energy use per ton (Hossain et al., 2016). Around
the road reflects the release of nutrients such as nitrogen or phosphorus 0.7 million tonnes of coarse and fine aggregates were used in the con
by the factories in the surface waters during the road materials pro struction of the road section in this study. Utilizing these environmental
duction stage causing water body’s oxygen levels to dip and making the savings numbers in the context of this road section under study,
water unfit for aquatic biodiversity and human use. This has negative replacing natural aggregates with recycled aggregates from other con
bearing on SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation) and SDG 14 (Life Below struction and demolition waste alone can translate into savings of
Water). ~4500 tons of CO2eq., 15,000 MJ of energy, 18 tons SO2 eq. acidifica
Finally, high photochemical oxidant creation potential (POCP) of the tion potential and 4 tons PO4 eq. eutrophication potential. Other options
road means high levels of nitrogen oxides and hydrocarbons are emitted include the use of carbon steel slag aggregate as an alternative giving 6%
during the manufacturing of road materials which in presence of sun savings on GHG emissions and 10–20% savings on other environmental
light will form secondary air pollutants in the atmosphere such as ozone categories (Mladenovič et al., 2015). Replacing traditional aggregates
with waste glass, incinerator bottom ash, blast oxygen furnace slag, coal
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A. Chaudhary and A. Akhtar Environmental Impact Assessment Review 106 (2024) 107477
waste powder or ceramic waste aggregates can also result in low to kg CO2eq./m2 for a road section in Italy (Praticò et al., 2020; Giunta
moderate environmental benefits (Aghayan et al., 2021; Díaz-Piloneta et al., 2020) considering materials production, transportation, and on-
et al., 2021). site construction stages only. The difference could be attributed to
The road section in this study was traditional asphalt based meaning higher width of road carriageway in the case of Italy (9.5 m instead of 7
it is composed of bitumen as a binding material holding together ag m in our case) as well as to higher transportation distances, use of other
gregates and sand. Several alternatives of asphalt have been proposed in materials and higher characterization factors for road materials. More
the literature, but the biochar modified bioasphalt (BMBA) based on over, just like the study in Italy, we also found that the material pro
wood or pig manure seems to result in highest energy and GHG savings duction stage contributes the most (60–80%) to the total environmental
up to ~70% (Zhou et al., 2020). Use of materials such as crumb rubber, footprint of the road section.
lignin, polyurethane, or bio-binder, in asphalt construction can also lead While a full sensitivity analysis is beyond the scope of this study, we
to substantial environmental savings (Tokede et al., 2020). Recycling highlight the importance of using country-specific characterization
the waste plastics, landfill wastes or reclaimed asphalt pavement for use factors to calculate the environmental impacts of roads. For example, the
in road construction has also been suggested recently to reduce its carbon emissions characterization factor value for aggregates used in
environmental footprint (Abd Karim et al., 2023; Mascarenhas et al., past studies on Indian roads (e.g., Sreedhar et al., 2016) is 0.0028
2023; Veropalumbo et al., 2022; Ferdous et al., 2021; Anthonissen and kgCO2eq./kg that is representative of Europe rather than India (taken
Braet, 2016). from White et al., 2010) while it is three times higher at 0.009
Apart from road materials, the ‘diesel use’ for running on-site ma kgCO2eq./kg in our study taken from Indian database (ICD, 2017).
chinery and moving the road materials to the site causes substantial Multiplying the above characterization factor values with total amount
damage to all environmental domains. Alternative fuels with lower of aggregates used in this road section and taking the difference reveals
environmental impacts should be explored for such operations in the that not using Indian-specific characterization factors for aggregates
future along with logistics optimization and smart fuel-efficient vehicles alone will lead to an underestimation of road carbon footprint by 1870
and machinery (Pamucar et al., 2021). tons CO2eq. (>15% lower than actual footprint).
Our analysis suggests that majority of impact occurs during the road
materials manufacturing stage for almost all domains of the environ 4.4. Limitations and future research needs
ment (Fig. 2). This means that to reduce overall impacts of roads, the
Ministry of Road Transport and Highways and other governmental A few limitations of our analysis must be kept in mind while inter
agencies need to pay more attention towards road materials preting the results. For example, owing to lack of availability of char
manufacturing stage activities, complementing ongoing policies on acterization factors, we could not account for other environmental
reducing the vehicular emissions and pollution during the use stage of impacts of the road such as land degradation or biodiversity loss caused
the road’s life cycle (Pali, 2020). by road infrastructure (Chaudhary et al., 2022; Estrada et al., 2022;
The results highlight the variability in the impact of different road Nayak et al., 2020; Asher et al., 2020). Road construction activities also
materials across the six environmental domains. For example, bitumen leads to particulate matter and several other air and water emissions that
contributes as much as 62% to the total life cycle energy use impact of can cause human and ecosystem toxicity which should be quantified in
the road section but its contribution to the total impact on ozone future (Font et al., 2014; Shrivastava et al., 2013). Future studies should
depletion and eutrophication potential categories is negligible. These also consider the environmental impacts such as noise pollution (Ruiz-
results are in line with Cong et al. (2020) who found that replacing Padillo et al., 2016), habitat fragmentation (Qin et al., 2023; Pinto et al.,
asphalt (bitumen based) pavement with polyurethane-bounded pave 2020) occurring during the operation (use) and maintenance phase
ment can result in energy savings but will increase the GHG emissions, (Liljenström et al., 2022) of the road life cycle if the data for it is
acidification potential and eutrophication potential of the road section. available (La Notte et al., 2018). This will make the LCA results more
Such trade-offs and variability in impacts underscore the fact that im comprehensive and ensure no hidden environmental costs and a more
pacts of road should be evaluated across multiple environmental do robust and accurate calculation of the benefit-cost ratio of the project.
mains rather than just focusing on climate change or energy use impacts Second, we calculated the per km footprint for our case study road
as has often been the practice in the past (ADB, 2010; Kar et al., 2015; section (Table 4) that was part of a state highway and located in the
Sreedhar et al., 2016; Singh et al., 2020). western state of Gujarat which is topographically flat with mostly dry
We also found that the magnitude of impact on different environ and hot weather throughout the year but further application of our
mental domains varies according to the road’s life cycle stage. For approach to a variety of road projects (e.g., for rural, urban, district and
example, the materials production stage has relatively lower impact on national highway roads) in other regions of India are needed to better
the ozone depletion potential (ODP) domain, but the transportation and understand and help benchmark the road environmental footprint under
on-site construction stages combined contribute >75% to this domain different geographical (mountainous, desert, coastal), weather, tech
owing to the high amounts of diesel use (~1.1 million litres) involved in nological and other conditions.
machinery use and in bringing road materials to the site and the fact that Third, note that the characterization factors used in our study were
diesel’s per litre impact on ODP is very high (Table 3). The learning from taken directly from Indian Construction Materials Database (ICD, 2017)
this analysis is that it is important to account for multiple life cycle that calculated them using CML impact assessment method (CML,
stages and environmental domains while characterizing environmental 2016). We do not have choice here because these are the only India-
footprint of roads because not accounting for stages such as trans specific characterization factors for construction materials available
portation might lead to underestimation of project’s impact on domains out there. To minimize the possibility of this choice of method affecting
such as ODP. our results and conclusions, we also report the normalized environ
mental impacts (Table 4) obtained by dividing environmental impacts
4.3. Comparison of results with other studies with their respective normalization factors that are also method (CML)
specific. Future studies should explore the use of other methods and
For comparison purposes, we also provide the environmental im compare the results with existing one.
pacts per m2 of the road section in Supplementary Table S9. Our results Also, our road section inventory (GSHP, 2018) and country-specific
per m2 albeit slightly lower, matches very well with those obtained by characterization factor sources (ICD, 2017) simply provide mean
other LCA studies for road sections in developed countries. For example, values without any confidence intervals around them. In reality, impact
the energy and carbon footprint of our road section came out to be 980 on the environment during manufacturing of a road material might vary
MJ/m2 and 40.08 kg CO2eq./m2 as compared with 1400 MJ/m2 and 55 across country depending upon processes used in different places and
9
A. Chaudhary and A. Akhtar Environmental Impact Assessment Review 106 (2024) 107477
factories. To calculate a range around the mean values, we therefore had cited in the paper or is included in the supplementary information file.
to make assumptions regarding the uncertainty distribution of the pa
rameters (Section 2.5 above). More investment in collecting sub- Acknowledgements
national and manufacturer-specific data on road material characteriza
tion factors is need of the hour for India. Making such data publicly A.C. acknowledges funding from the Initiation Grant of IIT Kanpur,
available will lead to more accurate road LCA and uncertainty analysis. India (project number 2018386).
Note that the main goal of our study was to present an approach to
calculate environmental impacts of any road section in India by con Appendix A. Supplementary data
necting publicly available BOQ, AOR and characterization factor data
sets. Our approach (summarized in Fig. 1) is valid regardless of above Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.
data limitations. Through application of our approach, we anticipate an org/10.1016/j.eiar.2024.107477.
increase in road LCA studies in India which in turn will spur investment
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