From Insight to Impact: East Riding of Yorkshire’s award-winning routes to lower carbon transport
When East Riding of Yorkshire Council collected two trophies at the 2026 Decarbonising Transport Awards, it reflected more than an isolated success. Their work shows how combining practical highways delivery with smarter use of data can accelerate carbon reduction across a whole transport system
Published: 12 June 2026
East Riding of Yorkshire Council is not an obvious place to pioneer transport decarbonisation. Its challenge is one of geography. It is a large, predominantly rural authority with dispersed communities, long travel distances and a heavy reliance on its highway network. Unlike dense urban areas, modal shift alone cannot deliver the scale of carbon reduction required. Instead, the carbon problem is embedded in the infrastructure itself, particularly in the assets the local authority directly controls.
Street lighting exemplifies this. Across the UK it accounts for over 1m tonnes of CO2 annually and costs more than £1 billion to run each year. In East Riding, decades of ‘always on’ lighting policy have locked in high energy use and significant embodied carbon. Around 10% of lighting stock is approaching ‘end of life’, creating a strategic choice: replace like-for-like or rethink the system entirely.
Conventional approaches, such as LED retrofits, improve efficiency but do not challenge the assumption that roads must be lit. Asset management for street lighting has remained siloed with safety and environmental considerations treated separately. With limited real-world data on how road users behave without lighting, removing assets have been widely seen as too risky. The result has been incremental improvements, but no clear pathway to wholesale carbon reduction.
It’s against this backdrop that East Riding’s double success at the Decarbonising Transport Awards 2026 stands out. Through the ADEPT Live Labs 2 Programme, the council has moved beyond improving street lighting to removing the need for it in many locations.
Best Highways Decarbonisation Initiative 2026: Right light, right place, right time
At the heart of this Award is a shift from lighting roads by default to providing safe night-time visibility while reducing financial and whole-life carbon cost. The Live Labs 2 Decarbonising Street Lighting Programme replaces conventional lighting on non-residential roads, especially inter-urban routes with a carefully planned system of:
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Highly reflective road markings
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Ultra durable road markings
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Solar-powered road stud lights (visible up to 900 metres
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Targeted, low level pedestrian lighting, where needed
Instead of replacing existing assets, East Riding’s approach removes unnecessary assets altogether, eliminating both embodied and operational carbon.
A key strength is its integrated design. The programme developed multiple innovations including: a whole-life carbon baseline for streetlighting; a Strategic Carbon & Cost Decision Tool for compare alternative designs options; a thermal AI safety monitoring system capable of analysing road user behaviour in complete darkness; and a large-scale biodiversity impact study examining the ecological effects of reduced artificial light.
Together these innovations allowed lighting to be removed while maintaining safety of all road users. The judges recognised both the impact and the transferability of this approach, noting: “This project delivered 40% reduction in carbon and lifecycle costs through multidisciplinary collaboration. They replaced traditional street lighting with LED and smart adaptive controls, providing a scalable and transferable blueprint.”
Rob Baines, Streetlighting & Signals Manager at Derbyshire County Council said: “The decarbonising street lighting project has had a direct impact on our work in Derbyshire…allowing us to progress our asset replacement programme safely and efficiently avoiding deep excavation work.”
Best Data Innovation Initiative 2026: Evidence led decision-making
The Data Innovation Award recognises how East Riding transformed decision-making.
Historically, street lighting decisions have relied on incomplete evidence. Collision data is retrospective and often sparse, offering little insight into how drivers actually behave. East Riding’s response was to replace assumptions with real-world data.
Central to the approach is a thermal AI behavioural monitoring system developed with industry partners. Unlike conventional cameras, Transoft’s thermal imaging works in total darkness and all-weather conditions. It provides data on vehicle speeds, breaking behaviour, pedestrian movements and near-miss and conflict indicators.
This dataset was integrated with carbon modelling, solar visibility systems and ecological monitoring to create a complete picture and evidence base linking safety, carbon and ecological impact.
Clearview Intelligence’s solar-powered road studs providing zero energy illumination and long-range delineation. Their performance in guiding drivers at night was monitored through behavioural data captured by the AI system.
Biodiversity and habitat monitoring used acoustic sensors, infrared imaging and AI assisted species recognition. These tools were deployed at both a test site and a control site in order to understand how reducing artificial light at night affects nocturnal wildlife.
A Strategic Carbon & Cost Tool, developed by the University of Leeds and the National Highways & Transport Network, translated streetlight design decisions into measurable carbon outcomes across a 40-year lifecycle. Unlike conventional carbon calculators, it also incorporates whole-life cost.
This approach provided the evidence and, crucially, the confidence needed for local authorities to support low light or no-light designs.
The judges highlighted East Riding’s winning Data Innovation Award, saying: “This was comprehensive and inspiring, reflective of eminently transferable innovation that sought to ensure that carbon saving measures targeted at street lighting do not come at the expense of road safety or wildlife.”
“The carbon calculator tool is invaluable as it helps present a sound business case to busy Directors of Transport and elected Members.”
Paul Binks, Highways Asset Manager at Lancashire County Council
Carbon, cost and ecological benefits
What distinguishes the East Riding is not just the scale of the savings, but the robustness of the methodology. It has combined real-word data with lifecycle modelling. Headline benefits include:
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More than 40% whole-life carbon reduction
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Up to 64% reduction at high-performing locations
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90 tonnes of CO2 emissions saved per km over a 40-year lifecycle
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Potential to reach 70% as designs are optimised.
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Significant capital and revenue savings, including £130k savings in energy cost at one site
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Reduced maintenance and associated emissions
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Ecological improvement, including increased nocturnal wildlife activity
Collaboration, leadership and delivery
Collaboration and leadership have been central to East Riding’s success, enabling both innovation and practical delivery. The programme was led by East Riding of Yorkshire Council and brought together nine local authorities, alongside Government bodies in Northern Ireland and Wales, to test solutions across different road types and geographies. This meant that the findings were not site-specific but nationally relevant and transferable.
Academic partners from ITS Leeds and the University of Sheffield provided analytical rigour, while a wide supply chain translated the concept into practical solutions on the ground.
What sets this collaboration is its depth. Ecologists, ‘dark skies’ specialists, community groups and schools have all contributed to monitoring and engagement, strengthening both the evidence base around biodiversity and public understanding of the project’s impacts.
As project manager Karl Rourke explains, the decarbonising streetlights programme was “developed by local authorities for local authorities” with implementation considered from the outset, including procurement and communications.
Public acceptance, which could have been a barrier to street lighting reduction, was addressed through a structured engagement strategy. A communications “countdown” document was developed, it sets out precisely when and how to engage stakeholders, including granular guidance on the timing of social media ahead of ‘switch-off’.
Industry partners also emphasised the value of this approach. Ralph Bates, Director of SolarLite at Clearview Intelligence, described the project as “a learning ecosystem where cross-sector working broke down silos and accelerated innovation.”
What next?
East Riding is already launching a self-funded three-year programme to remove around 2,500 lighting columns, approximately 6% of its total stock. This makes East Riding the UK’s first large-scale adopter of this new approach to street lighting, embedding the model into its business-as-usual asset management strategy. The projected outcome is significant is around £6m in savings over ten years, alongside sustained carbon reductions.
Momentum is building elsewhere. Authorities including Lancashire, Derbyshire and partners in Northern Ireland are actively exploring adoption, particularly where ageing assets reach ‘end of life’. The appeal is clear, avoidance of additional capital investment and delivering long-term savings.
To accelerate uptake, East Riding has addressed procurement barriers through a new framework via the YourTender hub, simplifying access to suppliers and enabling inter-authority collaboration. This reduces duplication and ensures consistency in standards.
At a national level, the work is beginning to influence policy and guidance including the Well-Managed Highways Code of Practice, and British Standards on low-level pedestrian lighting.
It’s a no-brainer!
East Riding of Yorkshire Council’s programme presents a highly scalable model for local and national adoption. The approach demonstrates that highways infrastructure can be financially, environmentally and socially sustainable at the same time.
With much of the UK’s lighting stock nearing renewal, the timing it critical. Local authorities have a choice between continuing a high-carbon legacy system or adopting a lower carbon alternative. East Riding has shown that the later can reduce costs and emissions while maintaining safety.
The message is clear. The tools and evidence now exist. The question is no longer whether it can be done, but how quickly.
Download: Right Light Right Place Right Time: A Practical Guide to Low Carbon Low Cost Streetlighting
The Decarbonising Transport Awards offer a powerful opportunity to share learning and celebrate ambition. For authorities seeking change, the message is simple: start with people, work with communities, and think beyond infrastructure alone.
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