Infrastructure Sustainability and Design

Spiro Pollalis, Andreas Georgoulias, Stephen Ramos, Daniel Schodek

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136320385
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Sustainability in Architecture

You're overseeing a large-scale project, but you're not an engineering or construction specialist, and so you need an overview of the related sustainability concerns and processes. To introduce you to the main issues, experts from the fields of engineering, planning, public health, environmental design, architecture, and landscape architecture review current sustainable large-scale projects, the roles team members hold, and design approaches, including alternative development and financing structures. They also discuss the challenges and opportunities of sustainability within infrastructural systems, such as those for energy, water, and waste, so that you know what's possible. And best of all, they present here for the first time the Zofnass Environmental Evaluation Methodology guidelines, which will help you and your team improve infrastructure design, engineering, and construction.

Part 1

Dimensions of Sustainability

PERHAPS THE GREATEST STEP the current generation has taken toward truly understanding sustainability is the recognition of the broad and interdisciplinary impacts it has. These can be grouped into the four categories of mitigating man-made impacts on the earth’s climate, efficiently using our natural resources for generations to come, protecting and preserving the natural world, and maintaining a high quality of human life. For each, a unique set of challenges and questions must be addressed and the first step in finding solutions is understanding the issues. Within this section we begin by identifying the scope of the challenge that faces developing sustainable infrastructure.

1

Climate Change and Infrastructure

Richard John

NATIONAL ENERGY FOUNDATION, UK

CLIMATE CHANGE is a major risk factor that long-term infrastructure developments need to address. The world has already warmed (see Figure 1.1) and the rate of change is likely to increase significantly. Climate change risks are both direct and indirect (see Figure 1.2). There is a need for infrastructure projects to adapt to a changing climate and, with the developments they serve, to mitigate the effects of climate change through the reduction of carbon emissions.

1.1	Mean surface temperature change for the period 2000 to 2009 relative to the average temperature from 1951 to 1980
	Source: NASA

1.2	Representation of some of the direct and indirect impacts of climate change on infrastructure

A key issue in designing and operating infrastructure projects to ensure that they are sufficiently resilient in the face of climate change is their long-term nature and the significant uncertainty associated with risk. It is likely that the indirect impacts of climate change—for example on the developments that the infrastructure serves—will on the whole be more significant than their direct impact on the infrastructure project.

As such, the most credible approach to ensuring that infrastructure development projects can live with, or adapt to, climate change is to undertake a comprehensive Life Cycle Assessment of risk to both the infrastructure project and developments that the infrastructure supports. An approach can then be adopted that aims to maximise the project’s resilience in a way that does not incur undue economic costs.

Given the huge long-term impacts of climate change and the current uncertainty and unpredictability of attempts to correct climate change through so-called geo-engineering—an issue that may also have an impact on infrastructure—there is a compelling case to ensure that infrastructure and the developments it supports is designed and implemented to minimise life cycle carbon emissions.

Recognising its importance, given the timescale over which climate change operates, and its interactions with other sustainability issues, risk assessment associated with infrastructure development and operation should include a broad range of sustainability issues including climate change. Other key uncertainties that this chapter will cover are the impact of technological developments, the importance of developments associated with governance as well as technology and economics, and the role of infrastructure companies.

Climate Change

Climate change has been cited as the most challenging environmental issue faced by mankind. The science of climate change at the global level is relatively mature,¹ and there is a strong scientific consensus that increasing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere will result in increased temperatures. Significant global warming has already been observed (see Figures 1.3, 1.4 and 1.5) over the last hundred years, and the scientific consensus is that this warming is associated with anthropogenic effects (i.e., caused by man). Projections for average global temperature rises by the end of the century vary depending on assumptions used regarding the growth of carbon emissions—largely linked to economic growth and the model used to project the degree of warming. By the end of the century, an additional temperature rise of between 2 to 4°C is fairly typical, but with significant regional effects. More extreme weather events, and a sea level rise that recent estimates place as a maximum of 2 meters, are expected. Acidification of the ocean and associated impact on marine life such as coral reefs are also projected.

1.3	Landslides associated with more extreme weather events will disrupt transport and other infrastructure projects. Risk assessment and cost– benefit analyses can be undertaken to protect key infrastructure assets
	Source: FEMA

1.4	Wildfires are more likely in those areas that will become hotter and dryer—steps will need to be taken to minimize disruption to infrastructure such as electricity grids
	Source: US Marine Corps

1.5	Flooding, New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina. Rising sea levels and predicted increased incidence of extreme weather events will make many coastal communities more prone to flooding, so requiring a review of flood defence options globally
	Source: Executive Office of the President

Global temperature rise projections cannot be lightly dismissed when it comes to decisions regarding infrastructure developments, although the projected impacts on a particular development are less easy to consider because predicted temperature rises will have significant impacts for almost all human activities.²

At the same time climate change has two other attributes:

• It is long term in its impacts, and there is considerable uncertainty associated with the magnitude and timescale of climate variations at a local level.³
• There is considerable uncertainty as to how climate change will have indirect impacts on infrastructure development and its use, for example due to the disruption of the global energy supply.

As such, politics and uncertainty are as relevant to infrastructure development as the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from a particular infrastructure development, or the design and engineering options available to allow it to be adapted to future climate change.

Embedding climate change for future infrastructure developments therefore requires an understanding of two key areas:

• The risks (political, economic, value, supply and demand changes, etc.) associated with climate change in terms of infrastructure and the developments it will serve over its projected lifetime.
• The potential to increase the resilience, and value, of a particular infrastructure development in the face of both the direct and indirect impacts of climate change.

Response to Climate Change

It is broadly accepted⁴ that solutions to climate change include a combination of measures including:

• ending deforestation, increasing reforestation
• renewable energy use
• fossil fuel power generation with carbon capture and storage
• nuclear energy
• energy efficiency
• low carbon transportation
• low carbon manufacturing/production
• use of materials for construction with low embodied energy (carbon) and a move to those that sequester carbon
• reducing the need to transport people and goods through appropriate spatial planning.

Whilst there is no legally binding international treaty to deal with climate change, the response to climate change by the European Union (EU)⁵ and the UK specifically indicate the likely range of measures to both ensure mitigation and adaptation to climate change. For example, the Climate Change Act sets a legally binding target of an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 cf. 1990.⁶ In the UK, senior government advisers have said that, in addition to strenuous efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (mitigation), the UK should prepare itself to adapt to 4°C of climate change by the end of the century, and many infrastructure companies now have a compulsory requirement to report on the extent to which they are planning their infrastructure to be resilient in the face of climate change. The EU has developed its own views on what relatively modest rises in atmospheric emissions mean for Europe.⁷

In the UK the approach to a low carbon economy by 2050 will include the decarbonisation of the electricity supply system, and energy switching from fossil fuel use to electricity provided by low carbon sources.⁸ This will be achieved through a supply side mix of:

• nuclear
• renewables
• fossil fuel with carbon capture and sequestration
• sustainable biofuels
• aggressive energy efficiency measures so as to address limitations associated with supply-side timetable, and rate of technological innovation
• use of waste heat.

Associated with the above is the use of embedded generation in new and refurbishment projects (renewables, and Combined Heat and Power (CHP) Systems), with the additional benefit of supporting a degree of resilience within the electricity network. The proposed generating mix, and extensive use of embedded generation and fuel switching, implies the need for smart grid systems.

Transportation systems that encourage modes that are inherently more carbon efficient have also been proposed.

Most of the measures listed above will affect new and existing infrastructure projects either directly or indirectly. The example also highlights the current situation, which is that governments sometimes need to use legislation, regulations, and price signals to encourage infrastructure companies to invest in low-carbon solutions that are resilient in the face of climate change.

Climate Change Risks—Direct

Globally the world will warm, but the extent to which it will, how this global change will affect communities and infrastructure at a local leve...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Sustainability—A Broad Perspective
• Part 1: Dimensions of Sustainability
• Part 2: Sustainable Practice in Infrastructure Systems
• Part 3: Assessing Urban Infrastructures
• Part 4: Design and Planning for Infrastructure Sustainability
• Contributors
• Index