A Framework of Green Growth Assessment for Thailand's Highway Infrastructure Developments

To promote economic growth, investments in infrastructure projects such as roads, bridges, tunnels, airports, and urban mass transit systems are indeed necessary. However, the growth in infrastructure investment is not without concerns. Transport sector accounts for a large amount of carbon emissions in recent years as the economy continues to expand. This paper presents a new framework of green growth assessment to be used for Thailand’s highway infrastructure by combining economic aspects and environmental aspects of the project into a single index. The proposed method is intended to be served as a “green-growth” barometer of major highway projects across Thailand. To demonstrate how the proposed model can be applied in practice, Bangkok’s motorway No. 9 is employed as a case study project presented in this paper. The results of this proposed method will be later used to evaluate the green-growth indices of major highways in Thailand. This study may help advance the knowledge and practices of sustainable highway infrastructure developments.