From Poles to Planet: Life Cycle and Carbon Footprint of OHL Infrastructure with Environmental and Social Compliance

The rapid expansion of overhead transmission lines is critical for renewable energy integration and grid reliability in India’s energy transition, but increasingly faces environmental and social compliance challenges across sensitive and densely populated regions.[1][6][10][12] This paper presents an integrated framework combining environmental and social safeguards with life-cycle carbon reduction, applying ISO 14040/14044-compliant LCA to 220 kV, 400 kV and 765 kV transmission corridors.[3][5][13] Results show that steel towers and aluminium conductors dominate life-cycle emissions (65–80%), with net footprints of 2,000–3,200 tCO₂e per km.[7][8][15] The study demonstrates that targeted measures such as GIS/BIM-based route optimisation, compact and monopole towers, HTLS and AL59…