When Australia began building the National Highway System in the 1970s, environmental sustainability wasn’t a priority.

As personal vehicles became the standard, engineers and policymakers didn’t consider the long-term environmental risks of shifting away from railroads and the growing reliance on oil. The carbon footprint of a massive transportation network? It wasn’t considered; societal progression took priority.

Today, priorities have changed. “Carbon is now taking a more central role in how we design and deliver projects,” says Kelvin Saldanha, a highway engineer and associate director at WSP, one of the world’s leading civil engineering firms. He notes that even 15 years ago, engineers rarely considered a project’s carbon emissions.

The infrastructure sector—which includes everything from roads and railways to wind farms and tunnels—now accounts for roughly 80% of global greenhouse gas emissions. In response to the growing global climate crisis, the sector is re-evaluating its strategies to reduce its carbon impact while continuing to build the future.

Instant carbon analysis for sustainable design

Addressing carbon emissions is a vital step. Yet, companies, such as WSP, have encountered difficulties compiling carbon data due to the varied methodologies used to calculate embodied carbon. The term refers to emissions coming from material sourcing and manufacturing, logistics, and construction activities, including those associated with demolition and waste processing. The process often required a lot of time-consuming work, translating every detail into a full carbon evaluation.

This is where carbon analysis capabilities come in. Solutions like Bentley Systems’ new Carbon Analysis features can allow users to measure and reduce the embodied carbon footprints of their infrastructure designs and engineering projects. These capabilities allow infrastructure engineers to simplify carbon reporting, easily visualise embodied carbon, and rapidly explore design alternatives.

By adopting these solutions, organisations can make sustainability a more natural part of the infrastructure design process. Early adopters say that in the past, the embodied carbon calculation in large infrastructure projects could take six months. With modern capabilities, they can do it in minutes. The calculation covers the emissions from material sourcing and manufacturing, which represents 65% to 85% of total embodied carbon emissions.

With this kind of calculation of embodied carbon possible at any time during the design phase, architects, engineers, material suppliers, sustainability experts and other stakeholders involved in the supply chain can use it to collaborate and make changes in almost real time. To make this possible, a connected data environment, built on an open, interoperable, and vendor-agnostic digital twin platform, such as Bentley’s iTwin, is important to encourage a sector-wide collaborative ecosystem. This approach ultimately avoids data silos, vendor lock-in, and promotes transparency and innovation across the infrastructure sector.

A new era

Tools, such as Carbon Analysis, can be a game changer. The ability for companies to calculate carbon early in the design process will make it easier to work toward a project’s net-zero emissions. It allows teams to identify and implement more sustainable practices from the outset, ultimately reducing the overall environmental impact of their projects.

Studies show a potential 20% to 50% upfront embodied carbon savings by simply specifying and substituting material alternatives during the design and specification process. “This proposition from Bentley really represents a paradigm shift in the way we calculate carbon, but also in enabling a more consistent and rapid-fire approach to calculating carbon so that we can actually do it in time to have a positive impact on the outcomes of our projects,” Saldanha says.

Although people have been building aqueducts, bridges, sewers and other large infrastructure for centuries, even millennia, we’ve only recently begun to understand their environmental impact. Regulations, sustainability certifications and financial incentives are pushing for change, but the biggest force behind it is the urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. As the infrastructure sector confronts the climate crisis, efficient embodied carbon analysis capabilities offer a vital shift in how projects are designed and evaluated. Through them, the industry can take major steps towards achieving net-zero goals, paving the way for a more sustainable future.

By Rodrigo Fernandes, Bentley’s director for ES(D)G (Empowering Sustainability Development Goals)

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