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In addition to the greater public role outlined previously, the engineering profession and the industries it serves must fully adapt to a low carbon agenda. Those involved in commissioning, designing, procuring or constructing infrastructure will need to make changes in the way they go about their business. Three key challenges are:
1 Making carbon a key design constraint
The engineering design process involves identifying constraints such as cost, material availability and health and safety. We must ensure that mainstream engineering design embraces life cycle carbon as a key constraint and an early factor in the decision making process for design choice. Decisions must account for consequential carbon – the carbon used and emitted in the use of this infrastructure.
ICE is committed to taking a lead on developing design methodologies, materials selection techniques, and procurement tools to drive this change, and will work with relevant bodies to achieve this.
2 Developing a systems approach
Individual pieces of low carbon infrastructure are not enough. Engineers, utilities, operators and investors need to understand the carbon implications of the interactions between infrastructure assets, people and machines. Only in this way will we be able to manage emissions
across whole networks. This systems approach will require greater knowledge-sharing and joint working between engineering and built environment professionals of all disciplines.
Government has committed to create a new body, Infrastructure UK, to identify the UK´s long-term needs and help ensure they are met. This body is well-placed to promote a systems approach to the development of our infrastructure networks.
3. Developing standard models for counting carbon
The first two measures will be more effective with accepted standard models for measuring life-cycle carbon impact. The engineering profession must take its share of responsibility for these changes but cannot act alone. Clients need to drive low carbon practice. Public procurement, which accounts for more than half of the UK´s infrastructure spending, has a central role to play. For example, the Highways Agency, Transport Scotland, and others are developing carbon-counting tools for highways construction and maintenance.
ICE is committed to working with partners to develop standardised carbon-counting methodologies to drive this change and leading the debate on the carbon price needed to effect major change and investment.
Transforming infrastructure case study: Transport Scotland carbon management system
Transport Scotland has been developing a carbon calculator tool, part of a Carbon Management System (CMS).
The CMS is intended to provide Transport Scotland and its supply chain with a transparent and user-friendly carbon calculator. The tool uses information on quantities of energy, fuel and materials used in different processes and projects, and converts them to estimates of carbon emissions.
It has been developed based on international protocols for carbon emissions and uses the latest available emissions factors.
The tool is being developed with additional functionality to provide a `carbon efficiency tool´ for projects. This will allow the CMS to be deployed throughout the life of projects as a means of providing information about carbon emissions with the aim of minimising them across the life of the asset.
Transport Scotland hopes the CMS will provide:
- Better information on energy use and carbon emissions
- A clear understanding of the energy and material flows through transport infrastructure projects and identification of opportunities for greater resource efficiencies and value for money on a whole life cost basis
- An understanding and systematic management of Transport Scotland´s carbon footprint year on year
- A tool to provide management information and a way of driving reductions in carbon emissions, delivering more sustainable growth
- An industry leading and accepted carbon calculator which can be reliably and consistently used by Transport Scotland´s suppliers and stakeholders
Transport Scotland is currently piloting their CMS on selected projects and is expecting to provide some initial indications of the relative proportions of the carbon footprint across some project types.
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