GHG Accounting in a Construction Project: The Case of Montreal's Turcot Project

摘要

The Ministere des Transports du Quebec has undertaken the Turcot project whose central element, the Turcot Interchange, one of the most important in Quebec on which more than 300,000 vehicles travel daily, must be rebuilt. The Turcot project also includes the reconstruction of three other interchanges, as well as sections of adjacent highways. The work began in 2011 and will last until 2020. The cost of the project as a whole is estimated at more than $3.5 billion. The Ministere has decided that the Turcot project should be a carbon-neutral construction project and wants the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions linked to the construction activities to be subjected to a compensation so that the construction activities result in a carbon-neutral footprint. Since this is a new way of doing things at the Ministere and few attempts have been made with regards to construction sites in Quebec, the Ministere has developed a methodology to account for GHG emissions linked to construction activities. To do so, the first step was to identify the activities selected for measuring emissions and develop a method of accounting easy to use on worksites in order to draw a faithful portrait of GHG emissions. The first constructions for the Turcot project were carried out with traditional methods and the Ministere performed a pilot project on a worksite to account for GHG resulting from the work performed, which was expected to result in a better method of estimating GHG emissions for the overall project. The experience gained in the first constructions lots shows that accounting for GHG emissions on a construction worksite as large as that of the Turcot project presents a certain number of challenges as there are numerous sources of emissions and the activities themselves are "mobile" in nature.