GHG Emission Reduction Opportunities for Road Projects in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi: A Scenario Approach

Abstract

The transportation sector is considered one of the driving forces behind the increased release of greenhouse gases (GHGs), with road transport being this sector’s main emissions contributor. In turn, efforts should be devoted to reducing emitted GHGs from this sector, and many such opportunities lie in the road transport life cycle. This paper investigated fourteen emission reduction scenarios based on the green initiatives issued by the Abu Dhabi Government. The explored measures are either related to road works and road municipal services or to traffic movement. The proposed measures were evaluated with reference to a baseline study previously reported by the authors for three different road projects in Abu Dhabi city. Findings reveal that normalized GHG emission reduction could be significantly reduced by (i) replacing 30% of internal combustion engine passenger cars with battery electric vehicles where the power demand is covered almost equally from nuclear and liquified natural gas (LNG) sources, (ii) reducing the number of passenger cars by 10%, and (iii) having one-fifth of passenger cars powered by LNG. A lesser significant reduction could be achieved by replacing conventional lamps with light-emitting diode (LED) lamps or by having one-fourth of lighting powered by solar energy. Even lesser reduction could be achieved by (i) replacing a portion of Portland cement with ground granulated blast furnace slag in concrete structures, (ii) fully utilizing treated sewage effluent for roadside-plant irrigation, (iii) reducing desalinated water used for roadside-plant irrigation by 20%, and (iv) increasing the number of higher efficiency passenger cars by 10%. Replacing hot-mix asphalt with warm-mix asphalt and using asphalt with a high stiffness modulus in the base layer results in low emission reduction. The use of 15% recycled asphalt or the use of 50% recycled aggregate in road construction has the least impact on emission reduction. When all explored scenarios were combined, an overall normalized GHG emissions reduction of 9–17% during the road project life cycle could be achieved.