Setting the baseline for carbon reduction

In a first for the infrastructure industry, our highways carbon dataset provides an essential baseline for setting emission reduction targets – and it’s open to all.

Kim Yates
Sustainability lead for UK and Europe, Mott MacDonald

If you don’t know where you’re starting from, how can you map a route to your desired destination?

It’s a challenge facing most infrastructure owners and the infrastructure value chain as they work out how to decarbonise project delivery and asset operation, on the journey to net zero: a lack of carbon baseline data for completed infrastructure projects makes it hard to set credible carbon reduction goals.

So in October 2023 we published the first large carbon dataset, for UK highways, via the Built Environment Carbon Database (BECD). The BECD is an open-to-all resource that we helped establish with the Building Cost Information Service.

These figures enable others designing and building highway projects to set and pursue science-based carbon reduction targets.

These figures enable others designing and building highway projects to set and pursue science-based carbon reduction targets, measured against robust, audited capital and operational emission data for real projects.

Data was harvested from our Moata Carbon Portal database and covers seven years’ worth of highway projects. It provides users with reference emission values for different highways assets, including pavement, roundabouts, flyovers, slip roads, drainage culverts, lighting and over-bridges. This granular breakdown enables designers to piece different assets together to closely represent – and establish a baseline emission figure for – new projects.

We will be releasing datasets for other infrastructure sectors in 2024 and beyond, and encourage others to do so too.

Our industry is historically bad at sharing data, because doing so is often seen as giving away competitive advantage.

However, tackling climate change is a collective responsibility. We can only make the necessary changes at the pace required by working together and sharing information. We will be releasing datasets for other infrastructure sectors in 2024 and beyond, and encourage others to do so too – so that we can all go further and faster on carbon reduction.