Evaluation of bus depot’s environmental impact and recommendations for improvements by material optimisation and improved energy efficiency

Abstract: The public transportation in Stockholm is expanding and in order to meet the new demand the amount of buses and depots will have to increase within the city. As a result, it is getting more important to evaluate and analyse the performance of bus depots in order to reduce its environmental impact. The aim of this work is to study the production and operational phase during a bus depot’s life cycle and introduce saving measures that can reduce the emission of carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2eq). This study is conducted in collaboration with Skanska and the depot chosen for this study is currently under construction and located in Charlottendal, Värmdö. A base model is created for the whole bus depot area and the environmental impact is evaluated regarding the activities and usage of materials during production and the energy usage during operation of the depot. The evaluation of the model is performed by using the calculation tools IDA ICE, Anavitor, SPIK and Excel, and the environmental impact is expressed in terms of emission of CO2eq during the lifetime of the depot, which is assumed to be 50 years.  In order to investigate how bus depots can be built to be more climate neutral and energy efficient, several saving measures are evaluated in four cases. The first two cases are focusing on optimising the usage of materials in the building process, by reducing the material groups with the highest environmental impact and considering green construction solutions. The other two cases are aiming towards enhancing the energy performance of the depot, by reducing the usage of energy according to BBR and deliberating an indoor parking place for the buses. The total emission of CO2eq from the base model is determined to be approximately 16 000 tonnes during the lifetime of the depot. About 42 percent of the environmental impact is instigated during the production phase and the rest of the emission is caused by the use of electricity and heat during operation. By considering the implemented measures it can be concluded that the largest reduction in emission can be obtained by optimising the usage of materials on the site, which is achieved by reducing two of the largest materials groups consisting of concrete and asphalt. By reducing the usage of these materials the total emission from the production phase can be reduced by approximately 9 percent and the total emissions can be reduced by up to 4 percent.  To verify the obtained results a sensitivity analysis is performed where three important parameters are investigated. The chosen parameters are; the assumption of the emission factors for the electricity and district heating mixes and the required heating demand for the buses. According to the sensitivity analysis the final results are highly related to the considered parameters. For instance, if the delivered district heating is assumed to be supplied by Fortum, which is the main distributor within Stockholm, it can be concluded that an indoor parking place for the buses is the most beneficial solution to reduce the total emissions. By building a new base hall the emissions instigated from the total heating demand can be reduced by 55 percent and the total emissions can be reduced by 25 percent.