Embodied emissions in rail infrastructure: a critical literature review

This paper investigates the state of knowledge in quantifying the embodied greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in rail infrastructure and develops a sketch model for estimating the GHG impact of rail infrastructure based on the literature. A literature review identified 22 publications, containing 57 case studies, at least touching on the embodied GHG for different types of rail infrastructure. The cases studies include high speed rail, intercity rail, light rail, commuter rail, heavy rail, freight, and metro rail. The paper examines the GHG impact per kilometre of rail infrastructure reported across the case studies and compares the boundaries, functional units, methods, and data used. Most studies employed process-based LCA for an attributional analysis. The embodied emissions associated with the case studies range from 0.5 to 12 700 tCO₂ km⁻¹; much of the variation is dependent on the proportion of the rail line at-grade, elevated, or in a tunnel. However, large ranges in GHG per kilometre remain after controlling for elevated and tunneled distance. Comparing the embodied emissions across the rail types was challenging, due to the large variations in system boundaries, study goals, and inventory methods adopted in the publications. This review highlights the need for standardization across the reporting of embodied GHG for rail infrastructure to better facilitate hot spot detection, engineering design and GHG policy decision making. The statistical model finds that overall ∼941(±168) tCO₂e are embodied per kilometre of rail at-grade, and tunneling has 27 (±5) times more embodied GHG per kilometre than at-grade construction. The statistical model is based on the findings of published literature and does not explicitly consider function, geometry, specifications, emphasis on whole lifecycle, legislative constraints, socio-economic factors, or the physical and environmental conditions of the construction site. (topical review)