Transport Insights

National Highways’ corporate carbon emissions increased by nearly a fifth over the last year, while emissions from construction and maintenance fell and road user emissions did not fall anything like fast enough to achieve a target of a 55% cut by 2030.

The company has published an annual update to its Net zero highways 2030 / 2040 / 2050 plan, which sets those three dates as targets for net zero corporate emissions, construction and maintenance emissions and road user emissions respectively.

Under the plan, progress towards the corporate emissions target gets a large boost from move to “certified renewable electricity”, which means that such electricity does not count towards the company’s target consumption. This is expected to reduce the company’s own emissions by 51% against a 2017-18 baseline but it is not allowed to use this method for its corporate reporting of its emissions, i.e. its annual report, or its KPI target for RIS 2, which it missed.

Unfortunately, during 2024-25 corporate emissions rose by 18% from 38,388 tCO2e to 45,241 tCO2e. The company said this was largely due to two factors: one motorway service operator ceasing to claim renewable energy certificates, and a data improvement exercise linked to a recalculation of corporate carbon emissions to achieve Science Based Targets Initiative verification.

A transition to 70% LED street lighting by 2027 is expected to provide a further 12% cut in emissions, although the company’s regulator, the Office of Rail and Road, has questioned why it is not going further.

National Highways says it installed 12,745 LED lights during the year, taking it to 51%, compared to 40% a year earlier, which appears to be the rate of change required to hit the 2027 target.

However, in the absence of a third road investment strategy, it does not currently have the funding to go beyond 2027 and in fact does not have a clear source of funding beyond 2024-25. There is no mention of the issue in the company’s settlement for the current, interim year. And while the company’s delivery plan for the year talks about “delivering our LED lighting programme to support our carbon reduction commitments”, this is not quantified.

On a more positive note, total maintenance and construction emissions fell by 23% from 567,794 tCO2e to 438,961 tCO2e. However, the report notes:

While any decrease is positive, it is important to acknowledge that the carbon intensity of our maintenance and construction activity fluctuates year-on-year depending on the nature of the work carried out.

On road user emissions, the company notes that the government has set its trajectory for net zero road transport by 2050 that requires up to a 55% reduction in emissions by 2030. In 2024-25 road user emissions on the strategic road network fell by just 1.3%, from 28,733,000 tCO2e last year to 28,359,000, and a reduction of just an overall 5% against the 2020 baseline of 29,849,000 tCO2e.

With the company continuing to build new road schemes that add to the number of vehicles on the network, it is not surprising that the transition to electric vehicle is making little difference.