Evaluation of the environmental load and the amount of $CO_2$ emissions on Design for railway Alignment

철도선형설계의 환경부하량 및 이산화탄소 발생량 평가

Following public expectations from the emergence of an international agreement with greater legal force after the expiration of the 2012 Kyoto Protocol, Korea is also making efforts to effectively and systematically initiate the mitigation policy and enforce the terms of the international climate change agreement. The majority of domestic industries are candidates for greenhouse gas emission regulation, thereby requiring the proposal of a method that effectively reduces environmental contaminate substances released from railway facilities, following the prediction of an increase in railway usage as an environment-friendly transportation method in the future. Accordingly, this study has quantitatively calculated the amount of released environmental contaminates through the life cycle assessment (LCA) on railway facility constructions, and has evaluated the environmental load and the amount of greenhouse gas emissions through the resulting values. The results of the LCA analysis showed that the amount of environmental load was the highest at the early stages of material implementation and construction, and that the value of global warming was viewed as the highest among the effects. As officially announced by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Program that $CO_2$ is the main culprit of global warming, the analytical values confirmed that the amount of $CO_2$ emissions accounted for more than half of the released greenhouse gases at 2.90E+04tons. The environmental load and $CO_2$ emission rates analyzed in this study are judged to be used in the deduction of the optimum environment-friendly method and quantitative environmental effect of railway facility constructions in the future, as the values can be evaluated based on their degree of environment friendliness.