Developed by the Association of Directors of Environment, Economy, Planning and Transport (ADEPT) and funded by the Department for Transport, Live Labs 2 will support four interconnected programmes of work:

• A UK centre of excellence for materials – providing a centralised hub for research and innovation for the decarbonisation of local roads materials, developing a knowledge bank, real-life conditions testing and sharing and learning insights: Led by North Lanarkshire Council and Transport for West Midlands.
• Corridor and place-based decarbonisation – a suite of corridor and place-based decarbonisation interventions covering urban through to rural applications, trailing, testing and showcasing applications within the circular economy and localism agendas: Led by Wessex partnership (Somerset County Council, Cornwall Council and Hampshire County Council), Devon County Council, and Liverpool City Council.
• A green carbon laboratory – examining the role that the non-operational highways ‘green’ asset can play in providing a source of materials and fuels to decarbonise highway operations: Led by South Gloucestershire Council and West Sussex County Council.
• A future lighting testbed – a systems-based examination of the future of lighting for local roads to determine what assets are needed for our future networks and how they can be further decarbonised across their lifecycle: Led by East Riding of Yorkshire Council.

Mark Kemp, President of ADEPT said: “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”. 

There is still time to enter the CIHT Decarbonisation Award which recognises projects, schemes, products and strategies that can demonstrate significant reductions of emissions associated with transport and transport infrastructure.