Background
Canada’s federal, provincial, territorial and municipal governments are committed to reducing national carbon emissions, with many establishing related targets, for achieving net-zero by 2050 or sooner. As a major contributor to national greenhouse gas emissions, the transportation sector is ripe for disruption and will require proactive efforts to contribute to those targets.
The design, planning and operation of road and highway infrastructure involves many practices and processes that contribute carbon emissions through their lifecycle. While not intended to support a specific policy target, and in accordance with TAC’s neutral technical mandate, this project will seek to identify those practices, evaluate their impacts and make recommendations for opportunities to explore lower carbon alternatives.
Objectives
This pooled- fund project will undertake a structured review of current practices across the core topic areas of asset management, construction, maintenance and operations, pavement design and management, soils and materials and structures [1]. It will seek to identify opportunities for reducing carbon emissions associated with road infrastructure materials, practices and processes. For each topic area, the project will identify and document beneficial practices that have significant potential to reduce future carbon emissions. The analysis will consider the applicability and implications of these practices in a range of institutional and geographic contexts relevant to TAC member road authorities.
Specifically, it will:
- Identify practices related to road infrastructure materials and processes that offer meaningful potential to reduce carbon emissions
- Assess the potential scope and scale of impact associated with each practice
- Identify major risks, costs and uncertainties associated with implementation
- Provide high-level guidance to help road authorities identify promising practices, determine where and when they may be appropriate, and evaluate their potential impacts
- Assess the potential for integrating practices into existing frameworks for environmental/sustainability declarations e.g. Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs), where appropriate
- Recommend approaches for individual jurisdictions and the broader road authority community to monitor and report progress
- Identify opportunities for additional work to develop supplemental technical information, including potential follow-up activities by relevant TAC committees
Deliverables
Intended for practitioners across the road infrastructure cycle, this project will consist of three interim deliverables (Stage 1, 2 and 3 reports) that would be technical in nature and serve as reference documents. The interim deliverables will be organized as follows:
- Technical Report, Stage 1 – Issues and Opportunities – Describing the findings of the literature review, surveys and TAC committee workshops
- Technical Report, Stage 2 – Beneficial Practices – Describing the categorization and evaluation of practices of interest, and identifying the most promising opportunities
- Technical Report, Stage 3 – Implementation – Providing implementation guidance for road authorities on beneficial practices and progress measurement and recommending further work and next steps
- A final report titled Low-Carbon Road Infrastructure: Opportunities for Canada. This report will outline a framework of beneficial practices for low-carbon road infrastructure in Canada, incorporating the three technical reports and feedback received from TAC committees, member organizations and stakeholders; it will be intended for transportation practitioners across a diverse set of road infrastructure components
- The development of content for a self-directed online on-demand course to support capacity building and implementation of the low carbon infrastructure practices unearthed from the final report. The training can be broken down into modules that align with the core topic areas, with about two hours of learning per module
[1] The project will not address broader transportation system initiatives or operational strategies that may also influence greenhouse gas emissions but fall outside the defined scope of road infrastructure. Examples of excluded topics include:
- Planning (e.g. alignment, sizing, provision of facilities for transit and active transportation)
- Traffic control and management (e.g. speed limits, signal coordination, incident response)
- Greening or stormwater management in the right-of-way
- Electric vehicle charging facilities and services
- Energy use for street lighting and traffic control
- Energy use for road authority buildings and employee travel
- Demand management measures (e.g. road pricing, parking pricing, ridesharing, traveller information)
These topics may support broader objectives related to low-carbon transportation systems but would be more appropriately addressed through other initiatives.