Impact of vehicle electrification on road roughness induced greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions

Pavement surficial conditions significantly impact vehicle fuel consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Roughness-induced rolling resistance (RR) is often considered the largest contributor to GHG emissions in highway pavement life cycle assessment (LCA). This study examines the impact of vehicle electrification on roughness-induced GHG emissions at two levels: direct emissions from tailpipes and cumulative emissions factoring in upstream emissions. We conducted a case study-based analysis to quantify and estimate the emission levels. We used three scenarios of vehicle fleet share: (1) conservative adoption of electric vehicles (EV), (2) aggressive adoption of battery electric vehicles (BEV), and (3) moderate adoption of BEV and plug-in hybrid EV (PHEV). We based our analysis on three reconstruction projects in Massachusetts (MA), New York (NY), and Illinois (IL). Setting internal combustion engine vehicle (ICEV) only fleet share as the baseline, the results indicate roughness-induced tailpipe GHG emissions can be significantly reduced with electrification alone. However, a significant reduction of cumulative roughness-induced emissions can only be maximized by transitioning to cleaner sources of electricity generation (i.e., from fossil fuels to renewable energy).