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Diss. (sammanfattning), 2019

International agreements to combat climate change have prompted the formulation of national emission targets, action plans, and methods for assessing and reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Transport infrastructure accounts for roughly one third of all construction-related GHG emissions in Sweden. Consequently, a national target of reducing carbon emissions from transport infrastructure projects to net zero by 2045 has been introduced. This target is being gradually imposed on contractors in projects by the Swedish Transport Administration (STA), which uses a life cycle assessment (LCA) tool to quantify and verify carbon reductions. Most previously proposed carbon assessment methods for transport infrastructure construction disregard the complexity and constraints imposed by typical project environments, where the ability to influence carbon emissions decreases over time while the ability to assess those emissions increases. Many such methods therefore rely heavily on assumptions and industry average data, or assessments conducted after project completion. These shortcomings may limit the methods’ ability to help stakeholders achieve emission reduction objectives.
Therefore, the overall purpose of this thesis was to explore carbon mitigation strategies for transport infrastructure construction with the specific aim to develop methods for assessing and reducing carbon emissions that can be applied during the planning and execution of transport infrastructure projects. The research design was based on a literature-guided exploratory approach in which new methods were developed and tested in different transport infrastructure construction settings. Each case study involved problem identification, collection of empirical data, development and testing of
methods, and evaluation and analysis of the new methods’ output.