Life-Cycle Assessment of Cooperative Vehicle–Infrastructure Systems

Life-cycle assessment (LCA) is a tool that quantifies the environmental impacts of products and processes and has been used in several fields, including transportation. This paper explains the fundamentals of LCA and describes the application of LCA to transportation. The paper specifically analyzes cooperative vehicle–infrastructure systems (CVISs). CVISs are the basis of connected vehicle technology applications, which promise to provide improvements in safety, mobility, and the environmental impacts of transportation. A change to a CVIS requires renovations, primarily the addition of electronics and communication hardware to vehicles and infrastructure. Electronics manufacturing has been challenged because of its strong impacts on natural resources and energy demand. These impacts create concern about the potential environmental benefits or drawbacks of CVISs. Despite the need for additional electronics, the vehicle fuel savings yielded enough reductions in carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions and energy use to offset the effects of the added electronics. Over the lifetime of a vehicle, drivers could reduce energy use by 106 GJ and prevent a net 71 metric tons of CO₂ emissions.