Why Road Sustainability Can’t Stop at the Gate

Over many years, sustainability efforts in the road construction sector have focused on
what is easiest to control: emissions up to the point where the road is paved. That
approach has driven real progress, with lower production emissions, better data
quality, and greater transparency across the value chain.
Now, Johanna Andréasson, Group Strategy Manager at Nynas, believes that perspective
needs to expand.

“We’re seeing many signals that highlight the importance of looking beyond paving to
the road’s entire life cycle,” she says.
That means also accounting for what happens over decades of use, including
maintenance and eventual rehabilitation.

The limits of cradle-to-gate thinking

The reason why cradle-to-gate metrics have dominated sustainability reporting is
straightforward.

“It’s only natural that organisations first focused on what’s under their operational
control, and now most of them have plans in place to address those emissions,”
Andréasson explains.

Downstream impacts, by contrast, quickly become complex.

“There are a lot of variables that influence the life of a pavement – the overall
construction of the road, including the base layer, conditions during paving, traffic
loads, weather conditions, maintenance protocols and more,” she adds.

Those variables make the use phase harder to model – and when things are perceived
as complex and difficult, people tend to postpone rather than get started.

Why durability changes the climate equation

A recent report commissioned by the Asphalt Institute Foundation helps shed more
light on the significance of maintenance in life-cycle emissions. By applying a cradle-to-
grave perspective, the study shows that emissions during a road’s use phase, which are
largely linked to maintenance activity, can rival – or even exceed – the emissions from
initial material production. And that’s excluding traffic emissions.

In some cases, the report finds that more than half of total emissions stem from
repeated maintenance interventions rather than initial construction.
That shifts attention from only reducing emissions at the point of construction to
improving durability and reducing how often roads require maintenance.
“The magnitude of the impact from maintenance and rehabilitation surprised me,”
Andréasson says.

While the report focuses on the North American market, the findings still have
relevance for Europe.

“The report serves as a reminder for the industry in Europe that it’s important for us to
look more closely at durability and the potential climate impact of reducing
maintenance interventions,” she adds.

“It really reinforces the value of looking more closely at the whole life cycle.”

Road maintenance and emissions

The Asphalt Institute Foundation isn’t alone in highlighting the potential climate gains
from a more durable and well-maintained road network.
The European Asphalt Pavement (EAPA) 2025 Decarbonization Roadmap, while
focusing primarily on the asphalt production phase, also links improved durability with
fewer maintenance interventions and lower lifecycle emissions.
From a climate perspective, the most effective intervention may turn out to be the one
that doesn’t happen at all.

“Every maintenance intervention has a carbon impact,” says Andréasson.
While recycling and material optimisation remain important, she adds, every
maintenance intervention entails an unavoidable carbon footprint: equipment,
transport, site activity, and traffic disruptions all add to lifecycle emissions, regardless
of the asphalt used.

This is where durability also comes into play. High-performance binders may have
higher cradle-to-gate emissions, but they extend pavement life and reduce the need for
future repairs.

A recent white paper from Nynas also points in the same direction.
The paper examined three decades of field data from both internal and external sources
and clearly shows that using polymer modified bitumen (PMB) in a road’s surface layer
leads to a significant increase in pavement service life.
Thus, even if PMB has higher up-front emissions, its lifecycle footprint can be
significantly lower thanks to improved durability and fewer interventions.

“When you look at it together, durability really has a multiplier-effect,” says
Andreásson.

“Fewer maintenance interventions mean lower emissions, and at the same time
well-performing roads help reduce emissions from everyday traffic over decades of
use.”

The risk of making the wrong choices

Adopting a cradle-to-grave perspective – covering the whole life cycle, including
maintenance, rehabilitation, and end-of-life – reframes sustainability away from simply
choosing the lowest-carbon material at the gate and toward designing pavements that
last longer and need less intervention.

“Taking the full life cycle emissions perspective into account increases the chances of
making the most optimised decisions from a climate perspective,” Andreásson
explains.

Otherwise, high-performance materials like PMB risk being systematically overlooked.
And solutions that look better on paper at the gate may ultimately lead to higher
emissions, higher costs, and greater disruption.

A shared responsibility across the value chain

Addressing this challenge isn’t something one company – or even one part of the
industry – can do alone.

“Every link in the value chain understands why this matters,” Andréasson says.
“What it takes now is focus, capacity, and collaboration to turn that understanding into
action.”

For Nynas, that means continuing to develop materials designed for durability, while
also sharing insights built up over decades, and doing so as part of a wider, collective
effort.

Turning insight into action

The shift toward cradle-to-grave thinking won’t happen overnight. But Andréasson
believes the industry is ready.

“We know why this matters. We’ve done the groundwork. And we understand the
complexity,” she says.

“The risk now is waiting too long to take the next step. It’s doable. We just need to get
going.”