Environmental impact assessments of geotechnical works

Abstract

One of the major contributors to global carbon emissions is the construction sector. Using world environmental input-output tables from 2009, the total CO2-emissions from the global construction sector was calculated to account for 23% to total emissions, of which 94% were related to indirect emissions (Huang et al., 2018). Direct carbon emissions are emissions at the construction site and are related to burning of gasoline, diesel, and other petroleum products, while indirect carbon emissions are related to emissions caused by raw material extraction and manufacturing of materials. Work package 4 (WP4) of the project Under Oslo focused on quantifying the environmental impact of geotechnical works using life cycle assessment (LCA). There is currently a lack of standardization of when calculating environmental impacts from geotechnical works using LCAs, and for reporting of results from impact calculation (e.g., Kendall et al. (2018), Samuelsson et al. (2021)). This report provides an overview of the work carried out in the work package 4 (WP4) of the project Under Oslo with the focus on "environmental impact assessments". A summary and discussion of different documents prepared in this work package is given, after which future research is suggested.