The UK is at the forefront of the world’s net zero efforts, raising taxes on residents, banning most fossil fuel vehicles by 2030, and building out its wind and solar infrastructure.
However, not to be outdone, it is also launching a competition to to build the world’s first net zero road. The National Highways Agency is teaming up with the non-profit Connected Places Catapult to search for innovative solutions to build roads with zero net CO2 emissions. The total value of the competition is an enormous £1.7 million ($2.1 million), with competitors receiving tens of thousands of pounds in funding to make their road-building proposals a reality.
The National Highways Agency is using the scheme to supercharge its plans to make road-building in the UK net zero by 2040. The agency believes that innovators can develop technologies that will enable road construction without the usual environmental costs associated with putting down asphalt. The hope is that competitors will develop ideas that National Highways hasn’t yet considered, bringing innovation to a sector that remains largely unchanged.
The National Highways Agency also hopes that it can address structural issues in the UK’s road-building sector. Currently, the government department only works with a small number of large contractor firms. These companies are improving how they build roads, but the progress is slow and unlikely to deliver the desired results by 2040.
As such, National Highways hopes that working with smaller providers will inject more dynamism into this sector of the economy. Instead of doing things the same way every time, the goal is for small-scale innovators to come up with something fundamentally new that the government can roll out across the country, once the requirement to reduce CO2 emissions to zero arrives.
How companies propose to change the status quo differs considerably. Therefore, National Highways has included several challenges that it wants keen road builders to meet.
Alternative Materials
The first challenge is to make roads from alternative materials. Governments would like to see construction methods that reduce concrete, steel, cement, and asphalt production-related emissions, ideally by over 50%.
Life Cycle Considerations
The agency also wants companies to consider the full lifecycle of materials. Learning everything you need to know about pugmills and other techniques for managing these materials on-site is essential.
For instance, National Highways wants participants to come up with new ideas for improving management decisions that reduce CO2 emissions. For example, investing more in cameras and sensors on building sites could result in a more efficient use of resources.
Embracing The Circular Economy
Finally, the competition wants to see participants looking for ways to embrace the circular economy. That is, roads shouldn’t just end up in landfill after being broken apart and replaced. Instead, they want to see evidence of materials being reused, preferably indefinitely, to protect the rest of the natural environment from exploitation.
Companies that want to apply to be a part of the competition must have a UK address, be able to provide innovations that meet these challenges, and be able to have face-to-face m
