Reducing carbon

The carriageway Capital Programme for 2023/24 builds on previous years' work to assess and reduce our carbon impact due to these works. This includes the scope 3 emissions of the 'cradle-to-gate' production of materials, an advancement from previous years assessment is the inclusion of an average value for transportation to site and the carbon emissions associated with the installation of the materials. This shows a carbon footprint of approximately 3162 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalence (CO₂e) from the programmes' activities, with a saving of 635 tonnes of CO₂e, representing a 20.1% saving. This has been achieved through the use of warm mix asphalt on the majority of resurfacing schemes and the extensive use of ex-situ recycling. Ex-situ recycled material has been adopted for the majority of schemes in lieu of hot mix binder course. The savings are equivalent to over 2.3million miles driven by an average UK passenger car or the energy usage of 209 average UK homes. The percentage savings are slightly up on previous years due to the shift towards more structural works on the unclassified urban residential network, which has allowed the use of significant volumes of ex-situ recycled material from the now fully mobilised cold recycled bound materials framework.