Strategies for Achieving Carbon Neutrality in the U.S. Pavement Network

As energy consumption-related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from transportation and buildings decline, embodied emissions associated with construction materials will represent a larger portion of pavement life cycle emissions. In response to a global call to reduce GHG emissions (especially embodied emissions), the concrete industry has set out ambitious goals to move towards carbon neutrality without compromising the performance of pavements.

This webinar will identify and discuss both existing practices and emerging technologies for achieving low-carbon concrete mixtures in the context of the U.S. pavement network. These strategies include practices to reduce, replace, and offset impacts. The implications of these strategies on the embodied emissions of asphalt pavements will also be discussed. To investigate realistic approaches to achieve carbon-neutral pavements, we make use of a pavement management system model to simulate the rate at which pavements are maintained, rehabilitated, and replaced. Information from this model is used to estimate both material flows (that lead to embodied emissions) and operational impacts associated with all pavement segments in the network. The life cycle GHG savings from the local adoption of each low-carbon strategy until 2050 will be presented. The outcomes of this research provide a broad, realistic picture of pavement decarbonization by investigating a high-resolution track of demand for materials in the road network while considering the availability of low-carbon strategies and their respective costs.

This webinar will be presented by CSHub Postdoctoral Associate Hessam AzariJafari.

The MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub (CSHub) webinar series offers information of general interest to members of the building, paving, and construction communities, as well as to educators, students, journalists, and law and policy-makers interested in the environmental and economic impacts of decision-making concerning infrastructure. Videos of all of our recent webinars are posted to our YouTube channel and a schedule of upcoming webinars is posted to our website.