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0
Eqn. 2
where a0 is the radiative efficiency of CO2 and is defined as follows:
0
= 5.35
0
Eqn. 3
C0 is the initial CO2 concentration in the atmosphere and C is the concentration in the
atmosphere after the event which caused the perturbation.
Calculations for the BAU and TOD scenarios. The total CRF due to construction and energy use
of dwelling units and manufacturing and operation of light rail trains and cars are as follows:
= (
() +
() +
() +
())
=60
=1
Eqn. 4
where:
CRFSF-DU is the CRF due to the construction and operation of single family dwelling units and is
given by:
[(
0
) +(
1
1
(1
+1
1
)) +(
2
2
(1
+1
2
))
+(
3
3
(1
+1
3
))]
Eqn. 9
where:
n is the number of years, which equals 60 in this study, and,
ac, ao, a1, a2, a3, chi1, chi2, chi3 are constants in Bern's decay model.
A model is developed that estimates the CRF from TOD CO2 emissions as well as the avoided
CO2 emissions over a 60 year time period. The 60 year period is a generally accepted building
lifetime in the LCA community but can also represent a policy-relevant time period for a carbon
reduction goal (e.g., 80% of 1990 GHG emissions by 2050).
Results. The assessment of building deployment using CRF produces different results than
when GHG emissions are used and policies that change urban form to meet climate change
goals should consider integrating LCA with CRF. In the BAU scenario of deploying 21,686
single family homes, roughly $3 billion dollars of construction costs are needed. When the
Page 7 of 10 Copyright 2013 by Mikhail Chester and Dwarakanath Ravikumar
objective is to deploy TODs, approximately $475 million is needed for the same number of
dwelling units.
The larger the availability of upfront financing, the more multi-family TOD buildings can be
deployed sooner, resulting in lower CRF impacts due largely to avoided automobile travel
avoiding upfront construction emissions from more CO2-intense material use. In the fastest-
paced investment scenario (starting with $14 million of financing available in the first year), all
multi-family buildings are constructed in 20 years whether or not a quarter-mile priority
constraint is introduced. In the medium-paced scenario (starting with $10 million in the first
year), all TOD buildings are deployed within 30 years. In the slowest-paced financing scenario
(starting with $7 million), TOD building deployment takes 60 years, largely due to the low
constrained investment rates available at the tail end of the financing curves resulting in funds
only available for single family homes (Figure 2). The implementation of a constraint that
requires the construction of parcels within one-quarter mile of stations before construction is
allowed within the one-half mile radius creates the troughs in Figure 2 but has only minor
impacts on the deployment schedule.
Figure 2: TOD Deployment Schedules with Investment Constraints. For each figure, the left ordinate is the
number of dwelling units deployed (orange stacked area), the right ordinate is the cumulative investment (blue line),
and the abscissa shows years from 2015 to 2075.
Page 8 of 10 Copyright 2013 by Mikhail Chester and Dwarakanath Ravikumar
The prioritization of development within the quarter-mile radius lowers the average annual
expenditures on TOD structures. If TOD inhabitants within the quarter-mile zone are more likely
to reduce automobile trips then this urban form deployment strategy may actually lead to lower
costs and greater CRF benefits. In the medium-paced investment scenario, on average $20.3
million is spent per year on TOD structures when no quarter-mile priority is included. This
decreases to $19 million per year when the quarter-mile priority is included these costs
reductions also occur for fast ($26.5 to $24.3) and slow-paced ($15.9 to $13.7) investment.
As the aggressiveness of TOD construction increases, the CRF benefits also increase and at a
faster rate than GHG benefits due to the avoidance of larger upfront impacts. To enable these
benefits, per dwelling unit CO2 emissions increase (due to the heavier use of carbon-intense
materials like concrete and steel instead of wood) as multi-family structures are constructed in
place of single family. This CO2 investment moves future residents closer to light rail providing
them with the opportunity to shift a fraction of their household trips to light rail. Furthermore, trip
distances are expected to be shorter because households will be more centrally located.
Largely due to a decrease in floor area in multi-family apartments, these TOD dwelling units will
also lower their energy demands from 58 GJ/yr (electricity and gas) to 44 GJ/yr (electricity)
(energy use includes forecasting to account for energy efficiency gains based on exponential
extrapolation of past energy use changes from AHS (2011)). Extensive details of the energy and
greenhouse gas changes between BAU single family home outward growth and TOD inward
growth are provided by Kimball et al. (2013). The CRF impacts from TOD building construction
grow with increasing investment aggressiveness, from 0.29 to 0.34 GW/m
2
, due to the
frontloading of more carbon-intense material use during redevelopment. The construction of
TODs results in the building energy use, vehicle manufacturing, and vehicle energy use CO2
emissions that also have increasing CRF with increasing investment aggressiveness.
Fundamentally, the more aggressive investment in TODs, the more frontloading occurs
producing more upfront CO2 emissions which result in increasing CRF over the 60 year
timeframe of analysis. However, these investments avoid BAU outward growth as shown in
Figure 3. As more frontloading occurs for TODs, more single family homes and their energy use
and automobile travel are avoided. The result is an increasing net CRF benefit with increasing
investment. The CRF benefits are dominated by avoided automobile travel.
Figure 3: Life Cycle CRF Impacts with TOD Investment. TOD impacts are shown in the positive of the ordinate
and avoided BAU outgrowth in the negative. The abscissa is increasing TOD financing availability which creates
more opportunity for earlier deployment of multi-family structures.
Page 9 of 10 Copyright 2013 by Mikhail Chester and Dwarakanath Ravikumar
Policy goals to reduce carbon emissions focus exclusively in GHG gases and the CRF
approach produces a different payback calculus on an investment in climate impact reductions.
Conventional approaches often rely on GHG cost benefit analyses where a technology or policy
with higher upfront emissions may be preferred so that long run emissions are reduced. This
approach, while certainly valuable for reducing GHG emissions and CRF, produces payback
metrics that will differ from when CRF paybacks are used. This is because CRF is a form of
discounting that puts all carbon emissions over time into equivalent units (i.e., the potential for
radiative forcing). Emissions of CO2 in year one are not equivalent to those in a later year
because the year one emissions have greater opportunity for radiative forcing over a fixed time
period. Policy and decision makers should use CRF paybacks instead of GHG paybacks to
account for this dynamic. To highlight this point, paybacks on CO2 and CRF are developed for a
single multi-family TOD apartment building, and are shown in Figure 4. Both charts show the
first 15 years after the decision to deploy a TOD structure. During the first three years, the
building is constructed (orange) resulting in the release of CO2 emissions causing. These CO2
emissions will continue to produce radiative forcing potential at a decreasing rate as the CO2 is
absorbed by the oceans and terrestrial environment. Once construction is complete, avoided
emissions (blue) occur, the net benefit of new TOD activity and avoided BAU households. When
the difference between the two (the Cumulative in green) crosses the abscissa (or goes from
positive to negative) the payback on construction impacts has occurred. When GHGs are used
the payback occurs at 5 years and when CRF is used the payback occurs at 9 years. This is
due to the discounting of construction emissions with the CRF approach and their potential for
more radiative forcing in the long run, a dynamic that is not captured with the GHG approach.
This same result has been shown for other infrastructure systems as well (Chang and Kendall,
2011). Life cycle assessment practitioners should begin adopting CRF to provide policy and
decision makers with carbon reduction strategies that are sensitive to these time-based impacts
of GHG emissions.
Figure 4: Difference in GWP and CRF Payback for a TOD Multi-family Dwelling Unit. Initial construction of a
multi-family TOD apartment building are shown as orange. The net benefits between avoided BAU single family
home construction and new TOD impacts are shown as blue. The total (orange plus blue) are shown as green. The
comparison between the GHG and CRF approaches show how the nonlinear time-based radiative forcing impacts
can significantly change the payback on a carbon-reducing strategy or technology.
LCA is a natural platform for incorporating CRF impact assessment measures because it
facilitates the assessment of carbon emissions over long time periods and because there are
Page 10 of 10 Copyright 2013 by Mikhail Chester and Dwarakanath Ravikumar
already many protocols in place for standardized approaches for environmental impact
assessment. LCA is the preeminent framework for cradle-to-grave assessment of products,
processes, services, activities, and the complex systems in which they reside. As such, methods
have been established for assessing raw material extraction, processing, use, maintenance,
end-of-life, and transport between. These methods can serve to provide time-based carbon
inputs for CRF assessments. Additionally, LCA has been formalized to include inventorying and
impact assessment and CRF is a midpoint approach that will facilitate the connection between
carbon inventorying and climate change. CRF is a methodology for assessing the potential for
radiative forcing which improves upon GHG assessments that do not discount time-based
carbon releases. As such, CRF can serve as an improved impact assessment measure that will
position climate change scientists with better information in the future. In the meantime, CRF
should be used by policy and decision makers to more rigorously assess the outcome of
strategies or the development of mitigation strategies that avoid large upfront releases of GHG
emissions.
Acknowledgements. Dr. Chester would like to thank his soon-to-be wife for having the
patience to let him work on this manuscript during the four days before their wedding. The
authors received no financial support for this research.
References
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