13.10.2025
This year, at the Tallinn Creative Hub's Impact Day, a question was raised that shakes the foundations of the entire infrastructure world: can road and railway construction ever be truly sustainable? During the discussion, which brought together engineers, officials, and entrepreneurs, Rail Baltic Estonia's Sustainability Manager Kärt Mae said something that made the audience momentarily silent: "The greenest road is the one that is not built." But his words were not about stopping construction, but about changing the rules of the game. Mae believes that real change starts with collaboration and rethinking contracts – for example, an alliance model, where the client, designer and builder work together from the beginning and seek solutions that reduce the impact on the environment, not exacerbate it. In this approach, he sees an opportunity to change the entire system: to build less, but smarter – and to make the very idea of infrastructure more sustainable.
Impact Day, now in its second year, aims to make sustainability not the exception, but the everyday standard across every sector and business model. Few industries face such daunting challenges as infrastructure construction. The panel discussion “Road & Rail Construction – Can It Ever Be Sustainable?” held at the Tallinn Creative Hub brought four important voices from the Baltics to the stage:
The discussion was attended by Kärt Mae, Sustainability Manager at Rail Baltic Estonia; Ilze Dzalbe from Latvian State Roads; Tõnis Tagger from the Estonian Transport Board and Ragnar Kangro from Verston Eesti.
Below we present the story of their thoughts and future perspectives, as well as one vision that acted as a catalyst for the entire discussion.
What is the price of sustainable transport?
When it came time for Kärt Mae to speak, she wasn't afraid to speak her mind. "The greenest road," she said, "is definitely the one that doesn't need to be built."
In conversations that usually only emphasize CO₂ accounting or material efficiency, his sentence hit the audience precisely and sharply. Mae emphasized that infrastructure sustainability is not achieved solely through reducing emissions – it is an existential point of view: do we even need to build?
Rail Baltica, a transport project of great importance for the whole of Europe, connecting Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania with Central Europe, was born precisely in response to this question – to shift long-distance travel from road to rail, reducing air pollution and climate impact. But Mae did not support the illusion that railways are automatically clean. He emphasized that roads break up landscapes and can cause fragmentation of natural corridors. That is why Rail Baltica is already monitoring animal movements and water regimes at the planning stage, taking this into account when designing the railway and monitoring environmental changes even decades after construction. “This is not just about reducing CO₂,” said Mae, “but a decision that we as a society are ready to make so that movement can be truly sustainable.”
Asphalt, budgets and political patience
In Latvian road construction, Ilze Dzalbe is faced with a practical reality. “Roads cannot have zero standards,” she said, pointing out that road construction and maintenance will continue even in the era of the green revolution. Latvian procurement is often dominated by the lowest price principle, which leaves little room for additional green criteria. Dzalbe’s team has started mapping material reuse and creating sustainability databases, but the political agenda often remains at the level of promises.
“When politicians visit rural areas, people don’t ask about the green revolution – they ask when the road will finally be finished,” he said. His strategy is centered on research, the circular economy and avoiding decisions that only look good in the short term. His mantra: “Time is needed – the fastest way may not be the right way.”
Estonian experiment: carbon reduction through procurementon steam
Tõnis Tagger, who works as the environmental coordinator at the Estonian Transport Board, had the opportunity to bring a brighter note to the discussion. He said that Estonia has started to test green public procurement practices, where carbon reductions will affect procurement results. Currently, quality and sustainability make up 30% of the evaluation in pilot procurements, with the rest based on price – the goal is to reach a half-procurement model by 2030, where sustainability carries the majority of the weight.
Tagger said the first pilot projects will focus on asphalt production, one of the most polluting parts of the sector. For example, small innovations, such as adjusting drying processes during rainy periods, can lead to significant CO₂ savings. His vision is to start tying metrics to a monetary value, so that carbon reduction is no longer just a moral imperative, but an economic resource.
The contractor's dilemma: if the client doesn'tõoh, ohõib polluter võita
But Ragnar Kangro, who heads sales at Verston, stressed that change will not happen from one side. “If the customer doesn’t ask, the company that doesn’t care about the environment will win,” he warned. The “chicken-or-egg” dilemma he described is that companies can’t invest in green technology unless they are sure that their customers will pay for it. At the same time, governments are afraid to demand green construction without evidence that it is feasible.
Verston's own internal campaign reduced fuel consumption by several hundred thousand liters per year, rewarding drivers for their economical driving style. But according to Kangro, major change is only possible if companies are given freedom to design their projects. “In many public procurements, everything – layers, materials, methods – is fixed. It is not possible to innovate,” he said. He suggested that procurements should define the desired result, not the method – to give room for innovation. For example, Verston's participation in the construction of Estonia's largest wind farm made it possible to reduce excavation and thus peat removal and the use of imported sand, as the technical conditions were openly formulated.
Reconciliation and agreements as tools for climate mitigation
According to Mae, the change is not just about politics or technology – contracts themselves can be the key issue that brings about change. Traditional procurement types fix projects years in advance, which closes the door to new solutions. His proposal is collaborative models, such as the alliance model, which is partly used in Rail Baltic Estonia – the client, designer and builder work together from the beginning.
Mae explained that ultimately, the designer designs what the builder can build, and the builder builds what the client can afford. The ongoing collaboration in this triangle allows for flexibility and innovation, including achieving sustainability goals that are difficult to set out in precise procurement requirements or selection criteria.
Shared realismis using rhetoric
The panel-like dialogue ended neither with triumph nor melancholy, but with a rare realistic thought. No one promised that construction would become carbon neutral tomorrow. Instead, a step-by-step, collaborative path was described – full of pilot projects, procurement reform and uncomfortable questions. A fresh idea sounded on this stage: sustainability does not start with materials, but with cooperation and a contract that we dare to draft and sign in a new way.
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