East Riding Could Get Green Street Lights

A project in the East Riding of Yorkshire is one of seven around the UK to get a share of £30m of funding to boost innovation in decarbonising roads.

The winning projects include ‘carbon capturing’ cement and green waste being used to make asphalt.

Among the initiatives that have won a share of the funding is an East Riding of Yorkshire Council project to decarbonise street lighting.

The project has won £3.3m of funding and will research and implement measures to decarbonise the country’s street lights and introduce the next generation of road signs, road markings, and cat’s eyes, able to reflect brighter in vehicle headlights.

The council's scheme will cost a total of £4.6m - the Government cash plus £1.3m match-funding from the council.

Currently, the UKs 7.2m street lights cost £3.5billion a year – including £1billlon in energy costs.

They produce one million tonnes of carbon emissions, contributing to the damaging impacts of climate change.

In the first project of its kind in the UK, the council plans to carry out studies into the way roads are lit, and then use the data it gathers to work with other councils across the country in order to drive change and create a new standard in street lighting for the future.

Trials are to be carried out along two of the East Riding’s busiest roads - the 31 mile stretch of the A1079 Hull to York corridor and the A164.

For the pilot scheme, the council has partnered with ten others in England and others in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

And it has already teamed up with Sheffield University, the Institute of Lighting Professionals and lighting companies to discover new, innovative and alternative products.

The scheme aims to explore more efficient uses and layouts for street lights, road signs and road markings.

Councillor Jonathan Owen, leader of East Riding of Yorkshire Council, said:

“This work is not only massively innovative – it will be the only such work of its kind in the UK – so the East Riding is leading the way.

“This will be the country’s first ever major review of street lighting, and how people perceive and appreciate different types of lights and differing levels.

“Britain's current road signs regulations were brought in in the 1960s, so it is high time they were reviewed and improved.

“Through this pilot scheme, we want to achieve major change and massively reduce energy consumption, and by doing that develop new guidelines to be adopted by local authorities nationally.”

East Riding of Yorkshire Council has 40,000 streetlights and 2,300 illuminated signs. So far 75% have been converted to lower-energy LED lighting.

It still costs the council £1.84m in electricity, and £850,000 in column maintenance, each year.

Roads Minister Richard Holden said:

“The UK is a world leader in technology and innovation and we must use that strength to both 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 successful Local Highways Authorities and their partners will be provided funding, subject to due diligence, to develop, test, pilot and roll out new technologies to facilitate decarbonisation, including in supply chain emissions. The seven successful bids are:

• Decarbonising street lighting, East Riding of Yorkshire Council: Plans to work on increasing efficiency for low carbon lighting to make sure they can still be clearly seen by drivers and to create a framework for an alternative manual for highway lighting, signing and road marking.
• Highways CO2llaboration Centre for materials decarbonisation, Transport for West Midlands: Supporting upskilling and developing a team in the West Midlands to decarbonise highways via two initiatives, including a ‘Highways CO2llaboration Centre’, and demonstrator sites showcasing and monitoring innovative decarbonised highway materials. 
• UK Centre of Excellence for Material Decarbonisation in Local Roads, North Lanarkshire Council: Creating a centre that will develop a materials testing programme identifying and deploying the latest tech for road construction, in addition to testing and deploying recycled materials from other industries to build roads.
• A net carbon-negative model for green infrastructure management, 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, for example recycling biomass from green waste.
• A382 Carbon Negative Project, Devon County Council: Aims to drive changes to the design, construction and maintenance in typical aspects of highway construction to reduce carbon emissions, and to build a new link road including walking and cycling options.
• Ecosystem of Things, Liverpool City Council: Aims to introduce an ‘Ecosystem of Things’, exploring a scalable and transferrable approach to understanding various systems (including design, public spaces, materials/process technology, recycling infrastructure and the legal, contractual and procurement processes) at city level to embed and adopt decarbonisation initiatives.
• Net Zero Corridors, Wessex Partnership: Will pioneer net zero roads that are built without creating more carbon emissions overall in Somerset, Cornwall, and Hampshire in 9 ‘net zero corridors’ linking rural and urban areas.

Live Labs 2 is designed to ensure innovations are shared across the whole of the UK and bidders were encouraged to create partnerships across the public and private sector, and academia. As such, the winning projects will be working together across four interconnected themes, including:

• A green carbon laboratory: examining the role that non-operational highways ‘green’ assets can play in providing a source of materials and fuels to decarbonise highway operations, for example, using biomass from green waste to create alternative fuels and asphalt additives.
• A future lighting testbed: Researching the future of lighting for local roads to determine what is needed in the future and how they can be further decarbonised.
• A UK centre of excellence for materials: providing a centralised hub for research and innovation that would help test construction materials and their use.
• Corridor and place-based decarbonisation: Working to create decarbonisation across specific, wider regions and corridors covering both urban and rural areas.

Live Labs 2 is funded by the Department of Transport (DfT) and organised by The Association of Directors of Environment, Economy, Planning & Transport (ADEPT), which represents 'directors of place' who are responsible for providing day-to-day services, such as local highways, as well as strategic long-term delivery.

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.”

This programme follows the previous and successful Live Labs 1, a £22.9 million innovation programme that focused on adoption of digital technology across the local roads sector in England.