Life Cycle assessment of Anti- and De-icing Operations in Norway

During winter maintenance in Norway 2014-2015, 225 445 tonnes of chemicals were used and 1 610 000 km driven while removing snow and ice on national and state roads. Despite this significant amount of chemicals and distance, winter maintenance is often omitted from current environmental studies of roads and transportation. Current studies focus primarily on vehicles, fuel technology and construction activities. This focus has been based on the fact that these are the largest source of emissions from road transportation. However, as vehicle and fuel technology advances and have less impact per unit, other aspects of transportation, such as maintenance and operation of infrastructure become increasingly important and should be included in LCA studies of roads in cold climates. In this study, life cycle analysis (LCA) is used to estimate the environmental impacts of the production, transport and distribution of chemicals during winter maintenance in Norway. The study is based on reported quantities for winter maintenance during an average winter between 2010-2015. The functional unit is set as anti- and de-icing operations on national and state roads per km during winter an average winter from 2010 through 2014. The results show that environmental impacts from winter maintenance are significant, and thus we argue that winter maintenance should be included in LCA of roads in cold climates. Further investigations on current winter maintenance methods and future options are to be conducted in order to avoid solving one problem while creating another one (problem shifting) during policy development.