The road to net zero

In January, the government announced £30 million to fund innovative projects to decarbonise roads

Seven projects across the country have been awarded funding through the Live Labs 2: Decarbonising Local Roads competition. The programme supports projects led by local highways authorities that are focused on tackling the long-term decarbonisation of highways infrastructure.
    
There are many ways in which to decarbonise the UK’s roads, including using renewable electricity in construction and maintenance, planting trees and greening the roads and switching lights to LEDs.
    
Live Labs 2 follows on from Live Labs 1, which focused on adoption of digital technology across the local roads sector in England.
    
Live Labs 2 is funded by the Department of Transport (DfT) and organised by The Association of Directors of Environment, Economy, Planning & Transport (ADEPT).
    
Mark Kemp, president of ADEPT, said: “Tackling the carbon impact of our highways’ infrastructure is critical to our path to net zero but hard to address, so I am pleased that bidding was so competitive. Live Labs 2 has a huge ambition – to fundamentally change how we embed decarbonisation into our decision-making and to share our learning with the wider sector to enable behaviour change. Each project will bring local authority led innovation and a collaborative approach to create a long-lasting transformation of business as usual. I am looking forward to the opportunity to learn from our successful bidders and taking that into my own organisation.”

Themes
The winning projects will be working together across four interconnected themes. The first theme is a green carbon laboratory which will examinine the role that non-operational highways ‘green’ assets can play in providing a source of materials and fuels to decarbonise highway operations. This could mean, for example, using biomass from green waste to create alternative fuels and asphalt additives.
    
The second theme is a future lighting testbed. This involves researching the future of lighting for local roads to establish what will be needed in the future and how roads can be further decarbonised.
    
A UK centre of excellence for materials is the third theme. This will provide a centralised hub for research and innovation that will help test construction materials and their use.
    
The final theme is corridor and place-based decarbonisation, which involves working to create decarbonisation across specific, wider regions and corridors covering both urban and rural areas.

Technology and Innovation
On announcement of the award, roads minister Richard Holden said: “The UK is a world leader in technology and innovation and we must use that strength to drive decarbonisation and the next generation of high tech jobs that go alongside it.    
    
“We are supporting this vital agenda to help level-up through £30 million funding for ground-breaking projects and boosting regional connections to support growth. “The government is determined to create good, well paid jobs – via innovation and investment across the UK – as we accelerate the road to net zero.”
    
The seven winning local highways authorities, along with their partners will be given funding to develop, test, pilot and roll out new technologies to facilitate decarbonisation, including in supply chain emissions.

Winners
The winning projects include cutting carbon emissions from streetlights to producing asphalt made from green waste like grass cuttings.
    
UK Centre of Excellence for Material Decarbonisation in Local Roads, North Lanarkshire Council will create a centre developing a materials testing programme, which will identify and deploy the latest tech for road construction. It will also test and deploy recycled materials from other industries to build roads.
    
Decarbonising street lighting, East Riding of Yorkshire Council – the council will work on increasing efficiency for low-carbon lighting to ensure they can still be seen clearly by drivers. They will also create a framework for an alternative manual for highway lighting, signing and road marking.
    
Highways CO2llaboration Centre for materials decarbonisation, Transport for West Midlands will support upskilling and developing a team in the West Midlands to decarbonise highways with two initiatives. There will be a ‘Highways CO2llaboration Centre’, as well as demonstrator sites which will showcase and monitor innovative decarbonised highway materials.
    
A382 Carbon Negative Project, Devon County Council. The council intends to drive changes to the design, construction and maintenance of typical aspects of highway construction in order to reduce carbon emissions. A new link road will also be built which will include walking and cycling options.
    
Net Zero Corridors, Wessex Partnership. The Partnership in Somerset, Cornwall, and Hampshire will pioneer net-zero roads that are built without creating more carbon emissions overall in nine ‘net zero corridors’ linking rural and urban areas.
    
Ecosystem of Things, Liverpool City Council. The council aims to introduce an ‘Ecosystem of Things’, which will explore a scalable and transferrable approach to understanding various systems. This includes design, public spaces, materials/process technology, recycling infrastructure and the legal, contractual and procurement processes. This will be carried out at city level to embed and adopt decarbonisation initiatives.
    
Finally, a net carbon-negative model for green infrastructure management at South Gloucestershire Council and West Sussex County Council aims to develop a first-of-its-kind approach to creating a net carbon negative model for building and delivering green infrastructure. This could include for example recycling biomass from green waste.