Material-focused circular innovation framework to address the cost and carbon challenge in capital project delivery: A scoping literature review

Infrastructure capital project delivery faces institutional pressure to meet net-zero (NZ) targets. Achieving NZ often result in conflicting demands between cost and carbon targets, where reducing project costs increases carbon emissions and vice versa. The circular economy (CE) presents a promising alternative to the linear "take-make-use-dispose" model, addressing this challenge by designing waste out of the system and maximising the value retention of materials, components, and products. However, understanding how CE can be applied to complex capital project delivery, both in theory and in practice, remains fragmented. To demonstrate potential strategies and their impact, we conduct a systematic scoping review and mapping of interdisciplinary literature on capital project delivery and the circular economy. Our review proposes a Material-focused Circular Innovation (MFCI) framework, comprising sixteen strategies across six stages of the infrastructure asset lifecycle to address the challenge of cost and carbon. Overall, our study makes two contributions: (1) a template-driven systematic mapping approach as a tool to combine heterogeneous literature, offering a novel approach for developing interdisciplinary frameworks and theories, and (2) the MFCI framework provides a structured foundation for future research in the circular economy and capital project delivery to address NZ targets alongside existing cost targets.