October 2025
Paving the road to net zero with data-driven materials and solutions
As the UK accelerates towards its net zero targets, the road industry finds itself in dire need of data. While much of the conversation around decarbonisation in transport has focused on reducing vehicle emissions and encouraging modal shifts, attention is increasingly shifting towards the roads themselves, and the materials, mixes, and maintenance processes that underpin them.
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Innovation here faces crucial barriers, including entrenched procurement practices, cost pressures, and risk aversion that can leave new, lower-carbon methods overlooked. To accelerate change, industry and councils need credible, validated data showing how alternative materials and methods perform under true operating conditions.
Live Labs 2: Proving what works
The government-backed Live Labs 2 programme is spearheading this transition by systematically validating low-carbon, circular, and data-driven solutions. With £30 million in Department for Transport funding and led by ADEPT (Association of Directors of Environment, Economy, Planning & Transport), Live Labs 2 is uniting local authorities, contractors, academics, and technology developers across England and Scotland. Through seven regional pilot projects, new materials and road-building techniques are being trialled in the field, providing the evidence councils need to confidently shift to lower-carbon approaches.
Breaking the evidence trap
Despite growing commitment to sustainability, bringing new low-carbon materials and processes into mainstream road construction is far from straightforward. The road sector faces layered operational and financial constraints that often slow or prevent the adoption of innovative, lower-emission alternatives.
Procurement frameworks, designed to ensure safety and accountability, tend to favour established specifications and methods. As a result, promising innovations can struggle to gain approval without large amounts of long-term performance data. This presents a challenge for new materials that have not yet been widely deployed, creating a Catch-22 where evidence is needed for adoption, yet adoption is necessary to gather evidence.
Further complicating matters, local authorities often find themselves facing mounting pressure to maintain ageing networks with limited resources, with immediate repairs taking priority over preventive, sustainable maintenance. Surface dressing has fallen to record lows in recent years, reflecting a wider pattern of underinvestment in cost-effective upkeep. Surface dressing volumes, while up 9% in 2024 according to the Road Emulsion Association[1], remain far below historic averages indicating continued underinvestment and a reactive maintenance cycle.
To overcome these hurdles, experts and government bodies advocate for collaborative procurement models and partnership frameworks that can support innovation, streamline performance monitoring, and scale up successful trials. Live Labs 2 is providing a blueprint for such collaboration, collecting validated performance and emissions data to increase confidence among procurement and engineering professionals.
Material advances and circular solutions
Early Live Lab 2 results are already demonstrating tangible reductions in carbon emissions. Among the many advances being evaluated, material choice stands out as one of the quickest and most scalable levers for reducing road-related emissions. Conventional petroleum-based bitumen accounts for a significant proportion of asphalt embodied carbon, with the industry responsible for as much as 14 million tonnes of CO2e annually across Europe.[2] Through this project, innovators are demonstrating that alternative chemistries can perform just as well, or better, without fossil dependency.
ACI Group is one such company contributing to this transformation. Partnering with technology developers and research institutions, the company is pioneering bio-based binders and recycled polymer additives that have demonstrated credible performance in trial environments. Its collaborations within Live Labs 2 underline a route forward for scientifically validated materials to cut emissions while maintaining real-world reliability and cost efficiency.
Putting circular innovation to the test
Results from a recent project in North Lanarkshire offer a clear example of the innovations that Live Labs 2 is validating. In October 2025, Motherwell became the first UK location to incorporate Ecopals’ EcoFlakes technology into its roads as part of a trial supported by the Live Labs 2 programme.
EcoFlakes is a high-performance asphalt additive made entirely from recycled plastics. Distributed exclusively in the UK by ACI Group, the technology replaces virgin polymer traditionally derived from crude oil, reducing reliance on fossil resources and cutting CO2 emissions by approximately 20% compared with standard asphalt formulations.
Half a tonne of EcoFlakes material was added to a 100-metre stretch of road in Motherwell, diverting as much plastic waste as six households produce annually. The material demonstrated rapid dispersal and delivered a smooth, durable surface, meeting every expectation for high performance asphalt. By validating its performance in Scotland, Live Labs 2 is providing the kind of real-world assurance that decision makers demand when adopting any new technology.
Closing the loop through circular solutions
Beyond polymer innovation, Live Labs 2 projects are providing additional pathways towards circularity. From low-carbon bitumen binders like Shell Carbonsink that demonstrate how carbon can be locked into road materials rather than emitted, to developing more sustainable warm mix asphalt technologies that can reduce both energy use and emissions by up to 20%, the programme is establishing the performance data needed to take the uncertainty out of procurement.
Recent testing has also demonstrated the potential benefits of surface dressing, micro asphalt, and spray-applied sealants, which can provide cost-effective, low-carbon alternatives to traditional resurfacing that can help to make road maintenance more sustainable. Each success adds to the catalogue of solutions available to councils balancing environmental, financial, and structural priorities.
From trial to transformation
Decarbonisation efforts cannot depend on untested concepts. Real progress comes from projects that demonstrate, measure, and improve on the ground – or, in this case, on the road. By integrating proven technologies that have been validated to work in real-world environments, the UK road industry is not only reducing its emissions today but also laying the scientific and operational foundations that will pave the path towards net zero.
[1] REA (2024), Supply of surface dressing to the industry
[2] European Asphalt Pavement Association (2024), Towards Net Zero: A Decarbonisation Roadmap for the Asphalt Industry