£30 million going to seven new regional projects across the UK to boost innovation in decarbonising roads
Future roads could be built using asphalt made from grass cuttings and ‘carbon capturing’ cement, supported by £30 million UK Government funding awarded to seven innovative, net zero projects.
North Lanarkshire is one of the schemes spread across the UK to have been awarded funding today through the Live Labs 2: Decarbonising Local Roads competition. The programme supports projects led by Local Highways Authorities focused on tackling the long-term decarbonisation of highways infrastructure, such as streetlights, and transforming local authorities’ approach to decarbonising roads.
Building a decarbonised road network requires materials that can stand up to the requirements and are innovative in combating carbon emissions. North Lanarkshire Council’s project will look to create a centre that will develop a materials testing programme to identify and deploy the latest tech for road construction, in addition to testing and deploying recycled materials from other industries to build roads.
UK Government Minister for Scotland John Lamont said:
Roads Minister Richard Holden said:
Councillor Jim Logue, Leader of North Lanarkshire Council said:
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, North Lanarkshire’s winning project successfully showed to be working across the four interconnected themes:
Live Labs 2 is funded by the Department for 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:
This programme follows the previous and successful Live Labs 1, a £22.9 million innovation programme that focused on adoption of digital technology across local roads.