Decarbonising Highway Lighting: Rethink, Review, Renew
Schréder 360 is a series where we give a holistic view of some of our most innovative projects. We hear from asset owners, project managers, external experts and our own engineers about lighting solutions that go beyond the ordinary.
This edition explores Live Labs 2, a three-year, £30 million programme funded by the UK’s Department for Transport which aims to decarbonise local highways infrastructure and assets. The programme explores innovative ways to decarbonise the highway network by experimenting with a range of solutions, from diverse providers, at several locations across the country. Urbis Schréder worked with the East Riding of Yorkshire Council and ADEPT (Association of Directors of Environment, Planning and Transport) on one of them, which has grabbed attention because of plans to switch off certain street lights.
Schréder is one of the world’s biggest street lighting manufacturers, but we are much more as well. Sustainability is at the heart of what we do, and if meeting net zero targets means a fundamental change in the way we light highways, we are here for it. By starting with a complete blank canvas, listening to our customers and approaching every part of the project with an open mind, we created something completely new and strikingly effective - together.
Rethink Carbon
Efforts to make transport greener have traditionally focused on electric vehicles, active travel and changing public behaviour. But what about the roads themselves? As part of Live Labs 2, East Riding of Yorkshire was chosen to propose and test low carbon alternatives to street lighting, lit signage and infrastructure.
Their main aim was to reduce so-called “embedded” carbon, the emissions made during the production process, and provide advanced, low carbon solutions for future highway maintenance along 30km of highways across different environments.
Embedded carbon is something Schréder has been thinking about for a while, from the polymers we use to make luminaires, to making designs as sleek as possible and embracing the circular economy at every stage. So when East Riding approached us at the beginning of the project, we were on board to think about things differently, at every stage of the process.
We can be present for the whole project, supporting the customer right from the conception stage. Listening to the customer’s needs, engaging in discussion and brainstorming we are able to provide a bespoke solution rather than one size fits all solution product!
Rethink Roads
The East Riding of Yorkshire testbed we worked on was a section of the A1079 on the outskirts of Hull, from Dunswell Roundabout to Ennerdale Bridge. Although the headlines focused on switching off streetlights, the team wanted this section to retain some lighting.
“It's not about flicking the big light switch off on the whole country,” says Karl Rourke, Service Manager for Street Lighting, Traffic Signals and CCTV at East Riding. “It’s about finally, as a sector, acknowledging that cars have headlights.” To support the partial switch-off, East Riding has installed more than 80km of new highly reflective white lines, more than 5,000 solar-powered illuminated road studs and more than 140 square metres of new, highly reflective signs on the A1079 and A164.
Rourke says that one of the biggest challenges is overcoming assumptions about lighting, especially that more is automatically better. One of East Riding’s very first tasks for the Live Labs 2 experiment was to investigate the collision history for the last ten years for both of the test roads. Roundabouts, junctions, and crossroads all show a higher than average collision record – but 80% of these collisions happened during daylight hours.
Urbis Schréder are a go-to company when it comes to bespoke. They’re the kind of company you go to for complicated things, and the test bed they’ve designed is absolutely fantastic.
To carry out the trial, the council was awarded £3.3m from the ADEPT Live Labs 2: Decarbonising Local Roads in the UK programme. Urbis Schréder agreed to provide equipment and 70 hours’ worth of free design services to support the decarbonisation of our highways and the authorities involved in this project.
The overarching objective is to make these spaces more attractive for active travel, further reducing the number of cars on the road, thus lowering carbon emissions. It’s important to note that street lighting in residential areas was not included in this project – although this is an area where rethinking assumptions can also bring benefits. With a clear focus on highways, we concentrated street lighting on pedestrian walkways and cycle paths, encouraging active travel.
Rethink Lighting
Rather than thinking outside the box, what this project required was to recycle the box and create a whole new container. We talked extensively to East Riding and ADEPT about what the future of roads could look like after dark. At the centre of our approach was considering the area for the active travel users, pedestrians and cyclists using the pathways, not the highway for motor traffic.
“By using advanced photometry, lighting levels can be achieved along the pedestrian walkway using shorter lighting columns,” says Lighting Solutions Manager for Urbis Schréder, Jack Cunningham. “This reduces the amount of energy and material required, improving the carbon footprint.”
The low height of the columns also increases the drivers’ perception of speed, encouraging them to drive more carefully. For pedestrians, including runners, the high level of vertical illuminance and horizontal uniformity allows users to clearly identify potential hazards. Finally, the contrast created by the unilluminated highway means the walkways can be lit to a lower level while still feeling safe and bright as shown in the virtual design.
Changing the height of the poles is a fundamental shift, but we’ve been lighting roads for a long time, and we wanted to draw on that expertise. “We wanted to take something that’s already proven and adjust it for our needs,” says Urbis Schréder’s Brook. “That’s when we thought of pedestrian crossings.” Decades of research have gone into making sure drivers can see people using Zebra crossings – so we looked at the way pedestrian crossings are lit, rotated it by 90 degrees, and applied it along the side of the highway.
Early indications seem to show this solution significantly improves safety for both drivers and pedestrians while reducing the amount of energy, material and maintenance required, thus decarbonising the highway. It also reduces light spill into unwanted areas such as green spaces or properties.
It also highlights a bigger issue about how and why roads are lit. “The current rate of street lighting asset growth in this country can't be sustained financially, and it can’t be sustained environmentally,” says East Riding’s Rourke. The British government plans to introduce mandatory planning targets, and hopes to build 1.5 million new homes over the next five years. “All of those housing states will eventually be adopted by local authorities. So where is our asset base going to go? We need to reconsider our lighting policies and make them sustainable.”
Rethink Design
With a clear brief to think outside the box, it makes sense to use the most cutting-edge design tools. With the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI), digital twins (where a virtual model of a system enables engineers to experiment before building it for real) and virtual reality (VR), we had a range of options to see what a lighting system could look like before starting work.
Urbis Schréder’s Cunningham used Blender to construct a real-time, virtual model showcasing the installation from the drivers’ and pedestrians’ perspective. For drivers, solar-powered road studs clearly show the edge of the carriageway, junctions and roundabouts. Pedestrians benefit from the new, lower, lighting columns.
Rethink Power
If the average person knows about the difference between alternating current (AC), and direct current (DC), it’s probably as a memory from doing physics at school, or the War of the Currents, when debate raged over whether early electric systems should run on AC or DC. The argument was settled more than a century ago, and the UK’s national grid has always run on AC.
However, when Karl Rourke and his team asked us to rethink everything with a view to decarbonisation, we questioned whether running the lights off the conventional power grid was the best solution. We worked with Ireland’s Keltech IoE, an innovative company who want to enable a “Net Zero Network” by transforming how first and last mile network infrastructures are connected and powered.
The DDN provides a future-proof, connected network that can be used as a platform for multiple digital services. These services may include traffic or pollution monitoring to assist the decarbonisation of the highway. Finally, the lightweight cables also use less material, further reducing the carbon footprint and cost.
“Schréder is transforming the traditional streetlight into a sustainable, multi-functional platform, delivering not just lighting, but a foundation for connected, low-carbon infrastructure,” Mark Kellett, the CEO of KelTech wrote on LinkedIn. “At the heart of this deployment is KelTech IoE’s patented DDN, providing a highly energy-efficient backbone for both power and data.”
Rethink Manufacturing
One of the main aims of Live Labs 2 is to remove embedded carbon from the process of making roads. At Urbis Schréder, we are sustainability led: we have been awarded the Ecovadis Gold Award three years running, placing us in the top 5% of manufacturers globally, across all industries, for sustainability.
During the concept stage, we engaged in some far-out blue-sky thinking, but the innovative materials and technology for the luminaires were not quite ready yet. As East Riding needed a solution for installation immediately, we turned to our current range of luminaires and selected the AXIA 3 EVO. This high-performing, cost-effective, lightweight luminaire is built from recyclable materials, as outlined in our Circle Light Label. It minimises the carbon emissions related to the manufacturing process.
Rethink Poles
The majority of the highway network uses metal poles, so we wanted to consider all aspects of the project in terms of decarbonisation. Steel columns have a large carbon footprint: metal is mined from the earth, its manufacture is energy-intensive, and disposing of metal products can be complicated.
In the same spirit of collaboration that brought us to DC current and solar-powered cat’s eyes, we spoke to Nordic company Valmont Tehomet, who suggested wooden poles in place of traditional steel columns. Wooden poles act as ‘carbon sinks,’ removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, instead of adding to it.
The poles are sustainably sourced thanks to Tehomet’s PEFC certification and they can be recycled or biodegraded once they reach end of life. They also provide a modern, aesthetic finish enabling a sense of visual identity.
Renew for the Future
The initial Live Labs 2 trial will run for 12 months, concluding in March 2026, and the behaviour of drivers, cyclists and pedestrians will be closely monitored. Rourke expects to release some initial finds by early 2026, and will continue to monitor the impact for the next three to five years.
The findings could lead to a rethink of UK lighting standards, which are based on how to light carriageways for motor traffic, instead of centring pedestrians and other modes of active travel. They could set a blueprint for what will and won’t work in future, and a roadmap for councils looking to decarbonise. With so many aspects being rethought, there’s the possibility to make minor changes and fundamental ones.
East Riding’s Rourke calls Urbis Schréder’s test bed a “gold star” example, and we can’t wait to see what the future holds. From analysing moonlight to making lamp posts from wood, we put our expertise at the service of the customer. It’s this approach which makes us an ideal partner for ambitious projects which redefine best practice.
“We’ll solve their problem and help them actually get there,” explains Urbis Schréder’s Brook. “That crosses all of our segments, whether it’s urban, rail, regeneration or sport. We want people to reach out to us, not just look at a brochure and say, which is the best decarbonisation luminaire?”