Accelerate Your GHG
Reduction Goals
CIR has a direct, measurable impact on reducing Scope 1 and 3 Transportation and Construction emissions - for those following The Greenhouse Gas Protocol standards of accounting and reporting for greenhouse gas inventories.
CIR has a direct, measurable impact on reducing Scope 1 and 3 Transportation and Construction emissions - for those following The Greenhouse Gas Protocol standards of accounting and reporting for greenhouse gas inventories.
Even if you don’t have a comprehensive sustainability program, CIR can help you get a practical start toward carbon neutral road maintenance processes.
Total GHG emissions from a 1 mile CIR project are low enough you can purchase offsets to achieve a carbon neutral construction process for less than $1,000.
If your organization or community values sustainability, here are some practical steps you can take to accelerate your GHG reduction goals.
Hayden Run Falls, Columbus, Ohio
Carbon Neutrality is Surprisingly Affordable
Generally accepted proxies for GHG emissions are widely available and can be easily used to model emissions.
For example, if a 1 mile rehabilitation job consumes 3,000 gal of diesel fuel, only 33.7 tons of CO2 equivalent (tCO2e) offsets need to be purchased at $15/tCO2e for $505.5 to arrive at carbon neutrality.
1 tCO2e currently range in cost from $10 to $16, making carbon neutrality surprisingly affordable. (A list of offset providers can be found at Climate Action Reserve.)
Cold in-place recycling puts carbon neutrality within reach because it removes the energy requirements of hauling away the old asphalt base, producing a new asphalt base and hauling in the new asphalt base.
Ask Your Contractor to Help
Ask your CIR contractor to create the GHG emissions model for you and provide you with the transparency and data to facilitate a carbon neutral rehabilitation process. Best in-class contractors already plan at a detail level sufficient to provide reasonable estimates of GHG emissions using generally available proxies.
Ask your contractor to facilitate purchase of high quality carbon offsets for the rehabilitation project and include achieving carbon neutrality in the bid price.
Update Your Bid Standard For Carbon Neutrality
Define your scope and include standards in your bid for modeling GHG emissions and purchasing high quality offsets on your rehabilitation project. The practitioner tools section of this website contains examples to help you get started.
Elevate Your Community
Share your project objectives, results and value created to your community and key stakeholders in the organization.
Purchasing carbon offsets has value beyond GHG reduction, too. It also supports communities that work to plant the trees or convert methane gas from landfills into electricity.