Held at the CONEXPO-CON/AGG exhibition in Las Vegas and hosted by Volvo Construction Equipment (Volvo CE), the Construction Climate Challenge seminar tackled issues such as calculating the life impact of building materials, the potential for cutting emissions in construction equipment and the environmental opportunities of delivering California’s high speed rail system. Speakers discussed the climate challenges of reducing carbon in Infrastructure Construction from their own diverse perspectives.
The Construction Climate Challenge is an initiative that aims to promote environmental awareness, enhance collaboration and share practices throughout the construction industry value chain. The seminar at CONEXPO-CON/AGG was moderated by Dr. Bryan Staley, president and CEO of the Environmental Research and Education Foundation.
Dr. Staley discussed the consequences and complexities of calculating the lifetime environmental impact of building material choices. He discussed how manufacturing processes, construction quality, transportation and material longevity affect the environmental impact calculation, adding to the difficulty of accurately determining optimal building material choices.
“Even using recycled materials, while intrinsically beneficial, doesn’t always lead to reduced emissions. Thankfully, models used to estimate emissions are becoming more sophisticated, leading to greater accuracy and the ability to accommodate site-specific optimization of emissions and cost,” commented Dr. Staley.
Dr. Staley was joined by Margaret Cederoth, sustainability manager at the California High-Speed Rail Authority. By 2029, the California high-speed rail system, which is currently under construction, will run from San Francisco to the Los Angeles basin in under three hours at speeds capable of over 200 mph. The total length will be about 800 miles. Cederoth described how the project has ambitious environmental targets which, if achieved, will see CO2 emissions reduced by 176,000 million metric tonnes in its first year.
“The project is setting a new, green standard for infrastructure development,” said Cederoth. “This includes operating with 100% renewable energy, all steel and concrete from demolition and construction recycled, low emission equipment used on site – 40% better than average – and materials life cycle analyzed. We are promoting the use of innovative technologies to drive down CO2 emissions. Thanks to efforts such as urban greening and tree planting schemes that offset emissions, we are committed to carbon neutrality during the construction phase. The whole scheme is trying to move behaviors into a new low carbon reality.”
Technology Promotes a New Breed of Machine
The final speaker was Dave Ross, vice president of advanced engineering at Volvo CE. Ross discussed the challenges facing equipment manufacturers in their efforts to achieve economic, environmental, and social sustainability. “While other industries have made huge advances in efficiency over the years, the process of construction hasn’t really changed and is, if anything, less efficient today, with major projects commonly taking longer and costing more," he noted. "This actually offers us a lot of opportunities to drive down the part of emissions that derive from construction equipment.”
Ross described how the adoption of new technology is leading to a new breed of intelligent, electric and connected machines. “Volvo CE’s HX02 prototype autonomous, battery-electric, load carrier, which is on display here at CONEXPO, is one element of an electric site research project that we predict will deliver up to a 95% reduction in carbon emissions and up to a 25% reduction in total cost of ownership,” he said. “While only a concept today, the HX02 is already six times more efficient than the latest generation haulers that use internal combustion engines.”
Volvo Unveils Next Generation Electric Load Carrier Concept with HX02
The presentation concluded with Ross describing how Volvo CE has set a target of increasing efficiency by 10 times, thanks to the adoption of intelligent, electric and connected technology. “Not only that,” ended Ross, “We are also working towards objectives whereby our equipment delivers zero downtime, zero accidents and zero emissions.”
