Application of lifecycle assessment to Shinkansen vehicles and cross ties in Japan

Abstract

Recently, environmental protection has become one of the most critical concerns on a global scale. Currently, it is widely recognized that lifecycle assessment (LCA) is a very effective instrument used to evaluate the environmental impact of various products quantitatively across their whole lifecycle. A basic LCA survey of Shinkansen vehicles and cross ties was conducted as a case study for the railway system. Through this study, the following results were confirmed. For any type of vehicle, more than 95 per cent of lifecycle energy consumption (LCE) and lifecycle CO₂ emission LCCO₂ is attributable to vehicle running. Lightweight vehicles, reduction of running resistance and the use of regenerative brakes contribute to energy saving in vehicle running. Regarding the CO₂ emission from four types of ties (wood, concrete, synthetic and steel), wood ties emit the least amount of CO₂ and synthetic ties the most. When the effect throughout the lifetime is considered, however, wood ties are by no means insignificant in terms of the environmental load. As a result of this survey, useful knowledge for applying LCA to railways was obtained.

Keywords

lifecycle assessment Shinkansen vehicles cross ties environmental protection

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Koseki

The Society of Japanese Railway Vehicle Industry (in Japanese)

Railway Technol., 1997, 213, 120.

Basic investigation for building up environmental load estimation system (in Japanese). In The Society of Non-Traditional Technology Eco-materials Forum, 1995, pp. 67–70.

Miyauchi

Nagatomo

Tsuchiya

Tsujimura

In Proceedings of the Third International Conference on

Eco Balance, 1997, pp. 321–324.

Annual Report on Japanese Railways (in Japanese), Supervised by the Railway Department, Ministry of Transport, Japan, 1997.