From strategy to streets: Liverpool’s approach to decarbonising local roads

Delivering meaningful transport decarbonisation at a city level requires more than isolated schemes—it demands coordination, leadership and long-term vision. Liverpool City Council has taken a whole-system approach to reducing transport emissions, combining infrastructure, policy and behaviour change to reshape how people move around the city

Published: 16 June 2026

Image: Liverpool crowned winners of the 2026 Best Local Transport Project Award . Decarbonising Transport Awards are organised by Landor LINKS

The challenge

Liverpool entered the Live Labs 2 programme facing a set of interconnected transport and carbon challenges that extended well beyond vehicle exhaust emissions. A central issue was that the local road network itself was a major source of embedded, whole‑life carbon. This was driven by the widespread use of carbon‑intensive construction materials, frequent maintenance cycles across an ageing asset base, and energy‑intensive construction and maintenance practices. Historically, decarbonisation efforts had focused on electric vehicles and behaviour change, leaving highways infrastructure emissions largely unmeasured and unmanaged.

Liverpool’s urban form added further complexity. Dense Victorian street layouts, a mix of residential and arterial roads, and heavy bus, freight and servicing demand associated with the port, city centre and visitor economy limited the applicability of standard low‑carbon highway solutions. Interventions needed to reduce carbon without disrupting mobility, access or economic activity.

Catherine Street Liverpool, CC John Bradley

A 'critical intervention'

Following the declaration of a climate emergency in 2019, Liverpool committed to becoming a Net Zero city by 2030—significantly ahead of national timelines. This created a need for rapid, scalable carbon reductions in transport infrastructure, rather than long‑term pilots with uncertain impact. Transport emissions were also strongly linked to poor air quality and health inequalities in inner‑city wards, meaning carbon reduction needed to deliver clear co‑benefits for health and quality of life.

Roads represented a critical intervention point for the city’s carbon strategy. Analysis underpinning Live Labs identified that a substantial share of transport‑related emissions came from construction, maintenance and materials rather than vehicle use—emissions largely absent from traditional transport carbon models. Liverpool Live Lab directly targeted this unmanaged category, demonstrating reductions of up to 40–70% on some schemes through changes in materials, design and delivery processes.

Crucially, Liverpool’s decarbonisation challenge could not be separated from its social and economic context. The city contains some of the most deprived communities in England, with lower car ownership, higher sensitivity to transport costs and greater reliance on buses and active travel. Transport underpins access to employment, the visitor economy and logistics activity, meaning solutions had to maintain network performance, minimise disruption and support local supply chains.

Live Lab enabled real‑world trials in everyday streets, building evidence and trust for wider rollout. Decarbonising highways also required upskilling local contractors, changing procurement to value whole‑life carbon alongside cost, and supporting innovation without excluding SMEs—ensuring carbon reduction strengthened, rather than weakened, the local economy.

The award-winning approach:
a whole-system local transport strategy

Liverpool’s approach is distinctive because it treats the road network as a system, rather than a collection of isolated projects. It combines governance, tools, innovation and social value within a whole‑life carbon framework.

At its core is a shift away from capital‑cost or tailpipe‑focused thinking towards whole‑life carbon management. Carbon is assessed across design, materials, construction, maintenance, operation and end of life, and is considered alongside cost, safety and community impact. Crucially, decisions are shaped early in the design process, where the greatest carbon savings can be achieved. This reframing addresses a historic gap in transport decarbonisation, where highway infrastructure emissions were largely unmanaged.

Liverpool operationalised this approach through a bespoke digital toolkit developed with Pell Frischmann and partners. Central to this is the Carbon Hierarchy Lens, which prioritises avoiding unnecessary interventions, reducing material volumes, substituting low‑carbon materials, and optimising construction and maintenance practices. An option‑configurator tool allows design and material choices to be compared on a like‑for‑like whole‑life carbon basis and is embedded into commissioning and scheme design, making low‑carbon decision‑making repeatable and transparent rather than reliant on individual champions.

Rather than testing single technologies, Liverpool created an “ecosystem of things”, targeting the highest carbon hotspots within each scheme and combining materials, design, operational and digital interventions to deliver cumulative impact. Innovation is tested on live roads, across residential streets and busy corridors, and integrated into the existing Highways Investment and Maintenance programmes, ensuring transferability into business-as-usual delivery.

The approach is strongly collaborative, linking the Council, industry, academia and national bodies, and explicitly connects decarbonisation to people and place through improved air quality, safety and local benefits. Designed as a pathfinder, Liverpool provides a replicable model now informing practice in other UK cities.

Carbon and environmental impact

Across the completed Liverpool demonstrator schemes, a total of 327.4 tonnes of CO₂e was saved compared with business‑as‑usual delivery. This represents an average reduction of approximately 34% and is equivalent to removing around 130 cars from the road for one year. These figures are based on robust, scheme‑level whole‑life carbon assessments, rather than aspirational or modelled estimates.

Flagship schemes illustrate both absolute and percentage savings. At Princess Drive, a busy commuter and bus corridor, 152.6 tCO₂e was saved, a 40% reduction—by replacing conventional asphalt with Milepave low‑carbon surfacing, demonstrating performance under heavy traffic conditions. Some of the highest proportional savings were achieved by targeting traditionally high‑carbon components. At Everton Park, photoluminescent cycleway markings achieved a 97% reduction compared with conventional lighting and a 74% reduction compared with hot‑applied thermoplastic. At Pinehurst Avenue, cold‑applied MMA markings delivered an 89% reduction.

Importantly, Live Lab assessed long‑term performance over a 40‑year asset life. Potential savings of up to 1,800 tCO₂e—a 79% reduction—were identified, driven by longer‑lasting materials, reduced maintenance cycles and fewer repeat interventions. As highways emissions are dominated by maintenance rather than one‑off construction, these long‑term impacts are critical.

Overall, Liverpool’s results show that whole‑life carbon reductions of 30–40% are achievable today, with targeted interventions delivering far higher savings, without compromising safety or service levels.

Why this stood out

Rather than producing isolated technical solutions, Liverpool Live Lab has developed a coherent set of tools, frameworks and evidence that enable low‑carbon decision‑making to become standard practice. These outputs are explicitly designed for adoption by other local authorities, ensuring that learning can be transferred efficiently rather than reinvented locally.

From the outset, the programme was designed for replication and national impact. Liverpool is positioned not as a standalone innovation case, but as a pathfinder, translating local experimentation into sector‑wide change. In doing so, Live Lab shifts the conversation from individual projects to systemic transformation—moving highways decarbonisation from niche innovation into mainstream delivery.

Delivery and governance

Liverpool City Council (LCC) acted as programme sponsor and, in this role, the Council set the carbon ambition and outcomes, controlled how innovation was embedded into business‑as‑usual highways delivery, and ensured alignment with its Net Zero 2030 commitment, the Highways Investment Programme, and wider climate, health and social value priorities. Unlike many innovation initiatives led by external consultants or industry partners, Liverpool retained decision‑making authority, ensuring innovations directly influenced live schemes rather than remaining alongside delivery.

Delivery was based on a collaborative ecosystem rather than a single supplier model. Engineering and design specialists, contractors and materials providers, academic partners and procurement and legal advisors all played complementary roles, with no single organisation “owning” the solution. This approach encouraged open data sharing, reduced commercial risk aversion and enabled multiple innovations to be tested concurrently.

At national level, ADEPT and the Department for Transport provided funding, a structured innovation framework and peer learning, without micromanaging local delivery. Liverpool retained control over sites, partners and how learning was embedded locally, balancing national oversight with local autonomy.

Importantly, leadership focused on outcomes beyond the programme lifespan. From the outset, Liverpool designed reusable tools, documented decision logic, trained internal teams and aligned outputs with future policy. The programme therefore delivered not only carbon savings, but lasting changes in behaviour, commissioning practice and capability across the council and its supply chain.

Church Street and Lord_street Liverpool - CC Citycentral

Challenges and lessons learned

Liverpool Live Lab demonstrated what is possible in decarbonising transport infrastructure, but it also exposed the systemic barriers that most local authorities face. These barriers were not primarily technological; they were rooted in data, procurement, skills, culture and decision‑making structures.

A major challenge was the lack of consistent data and evidence on whole‑life carbon. There was no established approach for measuring embedded carbon across local highway schemes, particularly emissions associated with materials, construction and repeat maintenance. Data was often poorly recorded, inconsistently calculated and difficult to compare. As a result, engineers and decision‑makers were understandably cautious about changing designs without robust, credible evidence, and early programme effort focused on building confidence in carbon assessments before decisions could shift.

Existing procurement and contracting models also acted as a constraint. Traditional highways procurement prioritises lowest capital cost, familiar materials and risk transfer, with little incentive to consider whole‑life carbon or long‑term performance. Low‑carbon options sometimes appeared more expensive upfront, despite delivering lower maintenance needs, reduced disruption and significantly lower lifetime emissions. Contracts and specifications were not designed to reward those outcomes.

Cultural and behavioural barriers further slowed change. Highways engineering is inherently risk‑averse, with long reliance on standard details, known suppliers and established practice. Carbon was often perceived as added complexity rather than a core performance metric, requiring sustained effort to build shared understanding and professional confidence.

Scaling and replication

Liverpool Live Lab was not built around unique geography, funding levels or bespoke technology. It was designed as a transferable operating model for city highways and transport authorities.

What makes it replicable is that:

It works within existing highway programmes, not alongside them
It relies on decision‑making frameworks and tools, not one‑off pilots
It uses market‑ready materials and methods, not experimental technology
It does not require behaviour change, enforcement or major political trade‑offs

In short, any city that maintains local roads, commissions surfacing, markings and street works and has climate or carbon objectives can apply the same approach.

What happens next?

The next phase is not another pilot. The next step is to stop asking “What innovative projects should we run?” and start asking “How do we make our lowest‑carbon option the normal choice on every scheme, every time?”

The priority is embedding, scaling and normalising what has been proven.

Personal / leadership insight

The most important leadership lesson from Liverpool’s experience is that decarbonisation only scales when leaders move beyond asking for better projects and instead redesign the rules, incentives and culture that shape everyday decisions. System change happens when leaders own the problem and change how decisions are made, not simply which projects are delivered.