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Energy Procedia 88 (2016) 243 – 249

CUE2015-Applied Energy Symposium and Summit 2015: Low carbon cities and urban
energy systems

Assessment of Urban Transportation Metabolism from Life

Cycle Perspective: A Multi-method Study
Fanxin Menga, Gengyuan Liua,*, Zhifeng Yanga,*, Yan Haoa, Sergio Ulgiatia,b
a
State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control, School of Environment, Beijing Normal University,
Beijing 100875, China
b
Department of Science and Technology, Parthenope University of Naples, Centro Direzionale, Isola C4, 80143 Naples, Italy

Abstract

The goal of this study is to provide a multi-method based on the eco-thermodynamic framework to examine the
environmental sustainability of urban public transportation systems. Urban transportation metabolism (UTM), as a
metaphor of urban systematic research methodology for transportation system, has been proposed and combined with
life cycle assessment (LCA). Results show that the most important factors in assessing the acceptability of a
transportation system are not only the direct fuel consumption, and the energy and material costs of the vehicles, but
also the energy and materials costs for the upstream and downstream side of the infrastructure construction and
vehicle fuel.
© 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
© 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of CUE
Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of CUE 2015
Keywords: Urban transportation metabolism; Life cycle assessment; multi-method; Environmental sustainability; Energy
efficiency.

Nomenclature
UTM Urban transportation metabolism
UM Urban metabolism
LCA Life Cycle Assessment
MF Material Flow Analysis
EF Energy Flow Analysis

*
Corresponding author. Tel.: +86 10 58807951.
E-mail address: zfyang@bnu.edu.cn (Z.F. Yang); liugengyuan@163.com (G.Y. Liu).

1876-6102 © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of CUE 2015
doi:10.1016/j.egypro.2016.06.158
244 Fanxin Meng et al. / Energy Procedia 88 (2016) 243 – 249

EX Exergy Analysis
EM Emergy Analysis
BRT Bus Rapid Transit
NBT Normal Bus Transit
EoL End of Life

1. Introduction

As an important socioeconomic sector in urban metabolic processes, transportation sector brings

significant economic benefits to society. However the environmental and social drawbacks (e.g., air
emissions, energy use, noise, accidents, congestion, water runoff, land use) also need to be addressed. In
2050, as much as 30-50% of total CO2 emissions have been predicted to come from the transportation
sector [1]. Researches on the transportation sector have been receiving much attention [2-5]. Many
academic works focused on material and energy inputs and outputs, energy efficiency, environmental
footprint, embodied energy and environmental impacts of the urban transportation, but most of them
focused only on road infrastructure, vehicles and transportation fuels [6]. However, a full urban
transportation system including road infrastructure, vehicle and fuel consumption, can be considered as a
biological organism, with the inputs of materials and energy, and the outputs of wastes to be regarded
analogous to urban transportation metabolic process. By characterizing the processes of urban
transportation metabolism (UTM), researchers aim to reveal the causes of environmental and resource-
related issues and develop appropriate regulatory measures accordingly. UTM is a newly formulated
concept, transportation as the key urban social sector, is the most established study in the urban
metabolism (UM) area. And UM emerges in the late 20th century as a systems-based approach to
understand urban trajectories of resources use, waste production, and associated impacts on the
environment [7-10]. If we compare the city to an organic body, transportation sector is much like the
blood vascular system carrying the population and materials flow, making the city alive.
As such, this study links together an integrated evaluation framework of UTM with LCA, to develop a
UTM-LCA model, that fully combines different thermodynamic analysis methods (MF, EF, EX, EM) and
environmental effects approach. This paper explores the consistency of the results from several evaluation
methods, trying to obtain further information about the thermodynamic efficiency and environmental
sustainability of urban public transportation systems. Consequently, the paper is structured as follows: (i)
introducing the methodology of urban transportation metabolism; (ii) applying the method to evaluate
urban public transportation system for Xiamen City; (iii) analyzing the characters of Xiamen’s public
transportation metabolic indicators; (iv)drawing our conclusions and making some discussions and policy
implications.

2. Methodology

2.1 System definition for UTM

The urban transportation system is generally based on the ISO LCA standards, requiring inclusion of
all the life cycle stages mentioned in environmental product declarations [13]. The urban public
transportation system, considered as a special industrial product, is composed by three components (i.e.:
sub-systems), namely infrastructure (road and bus station), fuel and vehicles [14]. The system boundaries
 Fanxin Meng et al. / Energy Procedia 88 (2016) 243 – 249 245

of the urban public transportation system are collectively illustrated in Fig. 1. The overall system consists
of three sub-systems, in line with the different life-cycle stages they are in: public transport system
infrastructures (considering the sharing rate of road), vehicles and fuel. Each sub-system can be divided
according to its life cycle stage: raw material extraction, manufacturing, use and end of life (EoL).

Construction materials
(cement, steel et al.),
asphalt, diesel, electricity

Resource Extraction Processing&Manufacturing Use (Annual UTM) End of Life (EoL)

Recycling

Infrastructure raw Infrasture Infrastructure use & Infrastrucure

material extraction construction maintenance demolition

Coal, Crude oil, Land

Kerosene, Fuel filling
oil, Petro, Diesel Fuel production
oil, Natural gas,
LPG Vehicle operation &
Vehicle disposal
maintenance
Vehicle components
manufacture & assembly

Virgin steel, Cast iron, Aluminum,

Lead,Ccopper, Glass, Plastic,
Rubber, Engine oil

Fig. 1. UTM-LCA boundary of the urban public transportation system discussed in this study.

When coupled with UTM, the LCA attempts to account for the environmental impacts of all life cycle
stages by summing and characterizing the environmental loading of inputs and emissions of all LCA
stages. Thus, by modeling the extraction of resources and their processing stage into multiple flows
entering the urban transportation system (the upstream supply chain of the system) and also the EoL
processes downstream of the use of a metabolic flow, the UTM-LCA approach tries to cover the totality
of the impacts of urban transportation system.

2.2 Algebraic methods for UTM-LCA

The UTM-LCA analysis framework is constructed and applied to the evaluation of the case study. The
approach used in the framework compares and integrates the results of several different methods, those
are deeply rooted in the principles of thermodynamics. As it clearly appears, a 'first-law' inventory of
material and energy flows in UTM-LCA is preliminarily performed. This, in turn, becomes the basis of a
following 'second-law' evaluation, based both on user-side (exergy) and on donor-side (emergy)
evaluations [15]. Conversions from first- to second-law patterns are performed by means of intensity
coefficients, whose properties are defined according to [11, 12, 16].
In the methodology framework, calculations are performed, based on the following equation:
)M )M L IL FM LL  Q  ¦ ¦ ˄1˅

where, F is the total input of material, energy, exergy, emergy to the system, or total pollutant emissions
of the system; j refers to those methods used in this framework, mainly as material flow analysis, energy
246 Fanxin Meng et al. / Energy Procedia 88 (2016) 243 – 249

flow analysis, exergy analysis, environmental accounting, emergy analysis; fi is the ith input or output
flow of materials or energy; cj,i is the conversion coefficient of the ith flow in method j.

3. Results

3.1 Multi-method evaluation results

A comparative analysis of the different thermodynamic indicators is performed for the BRT and NBT
systems in Xiamen city in Fujian Province, China, as summarized in Table 1. The analysis of the results
for the life cycle of urban public transport system is shown in Figure 2.

Table 1. Key Indicators

Items BRT NBT

Material intensitya(g/p) 660.86 2499.73
Energy intensity (MJ/p) 8.13 13.02
Exergy intensity (MJ/p) 7.78 9.85
10
Emergy intensity (10 seJ/p) 487.11 514.67
ELRb(environmental loading ratio) 0.49 9.15
c
EYR (emergy yield ratio) 3.03 1.11
ESId(emergy sustainability index) 6.17 0.12
a. b. c.
Note: excluding the natural input; ELR is the ratio of purchased inputs to free local renewable resources; EYR is the ratio of the
total emergy output to the purchased inputs; d. ESI is the ratio of EYR to ELR.
 Fanxin Meng et al. / Energy Procedia 88 (2016) 243 – 249 247

Fig. 2. Results analysis for the urban public transportation system

Note: For MFA, Natural input is not considered in this figure. And the Oxygen and Nitrogen gas are accounted. Considering the
data comparability, some phases of low energy/exergy/emergy use are combined as “other phases” including decommissioning,
disposal and recycling phase, vehicle material production phase and ADR phase.
From the table, the key indicators of BRT system, as shown in the Table 1, are better than the ones of
NBT system. These include the material, energy, exergy and emergy intensity. With respect to MF, the
NBT system is characterized by 2499.73 g/p. The material intensities (excluding the natural input,
Oxygen and Nitrogen) result to be nearly four times higher compared to the BRT system. From the
resource input point of view, the mass of mineral resources are more than the fossil resources. This fact
represents an unexpected outcome compared with respect to previous researches. The top three material
consumers are infrastructure construction, operation and maintenance phase, vehicle fuel production and
vehicle operation phase.
With respect to EF, the NBT system shows a higher energy intensity than that of BRT system. The top
three energy consumers are material production for vehicle fuel, infrastructure material production phase
and vehicle operation phase, nearly contributing for 94% of the total energy use. Considering the EX
aspect, BRT system is more effective than NBT. The same occurs with respect to the energy efficiency.
In fact, the available energy utilization ratio of BRT system is 96% higher than that of NBT system (76%).
From EM aspect, the indicators show that BRT system is more competitive than NBT system and
achieves higher long-term sustainability.

3.2 Environmental effects

From the environmental effects analysis, GHG emerges to be the largest output material, mainly
emitted within the vehicle operation phase. Due to the recycling of steel and aluminum in the
decommissioning, disposal and recycling phase of BRT system, GHG emissions are reduced. In particular,
the emitted amount reaches 8.04E+03 tons and takes up 26% of the total. Regarding the source of
airborne emissions, CO and SO2 are largely emitted from the vehicle operation phase; while NO2 and
VOC derive from the infrastructure material production phase; PM10 derives mainly from the
infrastructure material production and decommissioning, disposal and recycling phase.

4. Discussion and conclusions

This is an innovative and important research perspective of UTM, that, unlike previous studies, does
not merely focus on the direct vehicle consumption phase, but also takes into account the environmental
loads caused by the materials and energy inputs to the infrastructure’s and vehicle’s construction. This
leads to an exact and appropriate estimate of the results, potentially supporting the policy-makers in the
development of more appropriate regulations. A full urban inner transportation metabolism, including
inputs and outputs to the life cycles for each component of urban transportation system, cannot be
neglected. Accounting for the infrastructures cannot be avoided too, considering that vehicles without
roads cannot run.
In this study, an integrated assessment framework of UTM is conducted to examine the environmental
sustainability of urban public transportation systems. The most important factors assessed by this study
for defining the acceptability of a transportation system are not only the direct fuel consumption, the
energy and material costs of the vehicles, but also the energy and materials costs for the upstream and
downstream side of the infrastructure construction and vehicle fuel. This study provides a clear evidence
that more than one criterion is needed, when trying to make a fully reliable and sustainable policy.
248 Fanxin Meng et al. / Energy Procedia 88 (2016) 243 – 249

The goal of this study is not to obtain a ranking of transport modalities was out of the goal of this study,
since it could quickly vary with the rapid technological development of the means of transport. On the
other side, this work gives clear evidence that mono-dimensional tools are unable to deliver a reliable
policy choice. The integrated evaluation framework of this study helps identifying hidden costs,
environmental effects and demand for environmental support, which is a prerequisite for a deeper
understanding of the system and for supporting appropriate policy-making.

Acknowledgements

This work is supported by Creative Research Groups of the National Natural Science Foundation of
China (No. 51121003), National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 41471466), Beijing
Municipal Natural Science Foundation (Grand No. 8154051), the Fundamental Research Funds for the
Central Universities. Sergio Ulgiati also acknowledges the contract by the School of Environment,
Beijing Normal University, within the framework of the National “One Thousand Foreign Experts Plan”.

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Biography
Dr. Gengyuan Liu, Associate Professor, Master Tutor. Research interests cover Urban
Ecological Planning and Waste Management, Emergy Analysis, Energy Economics and
System Ecology. Produced over 50 peer-reviewed papers on the journals like: Applied
Energy, Science of the Total Environment, Energy Policy, and Ecological Modelling.
Involved in over 15 research projects.