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This month’s blog is from Giles Perkins, Programme Director for Live Labs 2. Giles discusses the publication of the programme’s carbon baseline reports, the challenges of carbon measurement and the urgent need for industry wide action to drive decarbonisation in the highways sector.

A significant milestone for Live Labs 2

We are pleased to have published the carbon baseline reports for our seven Live Lab projects. This is a significant milestone for the overall programme and we recognise the significant time and intellectual effort made by our Live Lab projects and their partners to reach this stage.

While the Future Highways Research Group (FHRG) carbon analyser tool has been used across the majority of our Live Labs, there have been variations in the approaches taken to establishing the carbon baseline. 

One project developed an approach specifically for its use case, while others augmented FHRG data with additional factors and thinking from academic and consultancy partners. These variations highlight the stresses and strains in understanding and measuring carbon accurately.

Need for convergence in the sector

The Commissioning Board has been watching progress closely, expressing a desire for convergence in the highways sector to accelerate the development of more standardised practices. This will allow greater consistency across the sector. 

Soon we will publish our work on organisational behaviour. This will explore some of the upstream and downstream change that is necessary to embed asset-based decarbonisation across all activities in the local roads industry.

Carbon baselines: just the beginning

These carbon baselines are by no means perfect. They are the start of a process by which our Live Labs will evidence the carbon effectiveness of their interventions. They are also the start of a conversation across the sector on how we address the fundamental challenges that hinder progress. 

We asked our Live Lab cohort what the greatest challenges they had in developing this baseline work. The summary below is useful in not only giving insights into our innovation programme, but also into the themes experienced across the highways sector.

Key challenges

1. Funding and local authority resourcing constraints

Local authorities continue to experience significant budgetary challenges, with increasing pressures in managing resources to keep local road networks in a usable and safe condition. 

This resource constraint in managing the day-to-day has directly impacted our Live Lab local authority leads in their ability to invest in the necessary tools and technologies for consistent and effective carbon data collection and analysis. 

Fiscal challenges also mean that local authorities struggle to upgrade their systems, hire specialised personnel, and thus implement comprehensive carbon management strategies. 

Without improvements to back-office systems, the comprehensiveness of carbon baselining is being compromised in some areas, making it difficult to track progress and make informed decisions for emission reductions. 

Our Live Labs have also observed that limited resources and people have affected the ability of local authorities to collect and manage what are inevitably large and complex carbon data sets. 

As is the norm across the sector, many local authority officers are juggling their ‘day jobs’ with carbon expectations and the challenge of innovation. We must also remember that carbon accounting, at the depth required in the Live Labs 2 programme, is still a relatively immature activity. 

One Live Lab reported that they experienced difficulties agreeing a methodology, with relative confidence, for determining the longevity of materials.

2. Multiple local authority collaboration

A number of our Live Labs have multiple local authority partners. This has resulted in some extra consistency challenges, due to localised differences in maturity of thinking, data availability and in some cases organisational structures. 

One Live Lab observed that collecting the data required for the FHRG carbon analyser tool depended upon cooperation from multiple local authority teams, requiring clear communication and well defined requests to address gaps, inconsistencies, and unfamiliarity with the project needs. 

This was not a routine activity, as new systems and equipment for data gathering and recording had to be sourced, which was an additional demand on already stretched resources and staff.

3. Inconsistent carbon emission factors 

A significant challenge in carbon baselining is the inconsistency in emission factors used for different materials. Our cohort found that determining the correct carbon factors for specific materials has been challenging. 

This is due to both to the lack of published Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) and in some cases, their inaccuracy. Some have also cited heavy reliance on arbitrary factors and the need for suppliers to update their historic carbon factors for bituminous products to meet the programme’s requirements. 

This could lead to exaggerated claims of carbon savings or could work the other way, where the data is generic and not comprehensive resulting in under reporting. For example, in the case of bitumen, the use a lower carbon factor by one supplier, in comparison to other suppliers (who use higher emissions factors for bitumen) causes discrepancies. This creates problems when comparing the carbon footprint of bituminous materials versus alternative materials, such as resin-based products. 

The lack of standardised underlying emission factors across the industry leads to inconsistencies in carbon accounting and makes it challenging to perform accurate comparisons and evaluations.

Aligning emission factors or adopting industry-wide standards could mitigate these issues and enhance the reliability of carbon baselining and evaluation. Specifically, a client and policy push to create and maintain EPDs is required, in order to improve the collective understanding of how to decarbonise assets. 

Additionally, agreement over standardised units of measurement and how to fairly assess carbon for materials with varying operational processes is required to drive consistency in carbon evaluations of certain service activities.

4. Scottish vs UK energy emissions factors 

The topic of emission factors also brings about a key observation from our Scottish local authority perspective. It has been noted that the standard UK energy emissions factors do not accurately represent the energy emissions associated with Scotland due to the higher proportion of renewables north of the border.

Consequently, the figure in the North Lanarkshire baseline reflects an updated figure based on Scottish Government guidance. This is important when considering that energy usage, decarbonised or not, forms a major component in the emissions associated with the local roads sector.

5. Data sharing resistance among contractors

Another significant challenge observed by our Live Labs centres around individual supplier's reluctance to share carbon data with other organisations for publishing. This reluctance to share data was often due to perceptions around commercial interests.

One Live Lab found that the Tier 1 contractors of some of their local authority partners were reticent to share their carbon data with the team. They were unwilling to share what they (rightly or wrongly) perceived as intellectual property with potential competitors. 

As a result, they been unable to comprehensively model the Scope 3 emissions for some of their local authority partners.

6. Inaccuracies of supplier data 

As well as a reluctance to share data, some Live Labs also observed that there was sometimes a lack of complete knowledge from contractors. The gaps in knowledge often centred around the data requirements or the existing processes for collection. 

This therefore resulted in data gaps, with one Live Lab observing that data on vehicle mileages and plant fuel usage proved difficult to collect, due to contractors not typically keeping records. Scope 3 data in general also proved difficult to collect due to these reasons.

Another Live Lab specifically noted that with the rise of biogenic and carbon sequestering materials, some suppliers are claiming carbon neutrality or even negative carbon emissions. The Live Lab questioned the validity of some of these assertions, as the materials can sometimes derive and be shipped from thousands of miles away, with presumably significant transport carbon. 

Additionally, if the carbon savings come from the cutting of trees or other natural resources, this limits the ability for future biogenic absorption if the resources were to be kept intact. As a result of these concerns, the point was made that it would be useful to have formal guidance on how to evaluate and select materials making such claims, to minimise losing time and resource to answering such questions in a siloed way.

7. Reliance on paper records

Continuing with the topic of supplier data, it was observed by one Live Lab that some suppliers are still heavily reliant on paper based systems. This poses a significant challenge in accurately tracking, recording, and evaluating carbon emissions. 

Paper records are often fragmented, making it difficult to consolidate data electronically and systematically. Additionally, the manual process is time-consuming, prone to errors, and lacks the transparency and ease of access that digital systems offer. 

The transition to digital record keeping is crucial for more efficient and accurate carbon baselining and evaluation.

8. Grass growth - rate and variability

A specific challenge for our Greenprint Live Lab (focused on arisings from highway verges) is that yearly and seasonal variations in grass growth mean the 2024 baseline may not accurately represent carbon and cost projections for future years.

It is accepted that grass grows at different rates in different areas with different soil conditions and subject to varying weather conditions. Consequently, the quality of the data gathered is likely to increase with the period during which it was gathered – meaning a longer project study is likely to result in more reliable data being captured.   

Join the conversation at the Live Labs 2 Expo

 At the Live Labs Expo in Liverpool on the 25^th March, we will be exploring these deficiencies and challenges with a view to considering how we converge thinking. We will be asking “can you afford not to be part of setting the future of asset carbon reduction” and asking attendees to actively collaborate to provide their inputs, insights and challenge.  

After the Expo we will be publishing a white paper outlining the collaborative actions to bake in carbon reduction as part of a new business as usual across the public and private sector.

You can request a place at the Expo via this link– and we look forward to you welcoming you in Liverpool.

Further information

• Unpacking the carbon question – blog with Giles from February 2024
• For more information on ADEPT Live Labs 2: Decarbonising Local Roads in the UK, please look at the Live Labs 2 section of the website.

Author

• Giles Perkins, Programme Director for Live Labs 2