During this special episode we recap The Road Forward International Summit, a first-of-its-kind global gathering focused on asphalt decarbonization, sustainability, and innovation. Richard and Brett sit down with Dr. Amlan Mukherjee, NAPA’s Senior Director for Sustainability and Intelligent Construction, to explore the insights, breakthroughs, and unexpected conversations that emerged across the event. With participation from North America, Europe, Asia, Australia, and South America, the summit revealed new perspectives on environmental product declarations, lifecycle assessment, and the future of sustainable asphalt production. If you couldn't make the conference, tune in to recap the best bits of this dynamic conference. Learn more about The Road Forward: www.asphaltpavement.org/forward
Released December 2, 2025. Episode 98
R: In 2022, NAPA unveiled a vision for the industry that was called The Road Forward. It was a vision of what the industry could look like if we set some net zero goals and we really focused on decarbonization. Now, since that time, The Road Forward has grown. We've developed a partnership program. We had a member summit in 2023 in Kansas City, and we continue to work on this program and show people the value that it really could bring to the industry.
B: Today I'm looking forward to hearing a little bit of a recap of The Road Forward's International Summit that was recently held and about some of the takeaways that we had from that. I really enjoyed my time at the summit, and I think it was a great event.
R: To talk with us a little bit more about this event that took place, we brought in Dr. Amlan Mukherjee, who's NAPA's Senior Director for Sustainability and Intelligent Construction. Amlan, can you just introduce yourself and tell the audience a little bit more about you?
A: Thank you very much, Richard. Delighted to be here. In my role in the sustainability program at NAPA, I find myself dealing with much of our EPD program as well as all the different research projects that are related to decarbonization and also on lifecycle assessment.
One of the most important things, in my opinion, that I'm working on is looking at the product category rule for the asphalt mixtures for North America. Right now, we're in the process of updating that. That's a lot of fun.
Besides that, I'm also engaged with the intelligent construction space and looking at ways in which AI and different digital technologies can be applied to the job site and also in the production scenario.
R: To kind of kick things off, The Road Forward International Summit really stemmed from the idea that there's a lot going on around the world in the kind of asphalt mixture decarbonization space. There are things happening down in Australia, in Europe, and Japan, and these other locations. The group realized that it was important to try to learn from each other, not have to do the same experiments. How does this event strengthen The Road Forward initiative and build on the things that we've done to really propel us farther down the road?
A: Great question. Since The Road Forward Initiative started about two and a half years ago, almost three years now, there have been various efforts within the umbrella of looking at sustainability at NAPA, all the different sustainability-related programs, but also the broader scope of decarbonization. An EPD program is a building block within the decarbonization effort, but there are so many other aspects that are crucial and so many other building blocks that have to be connected together. There are so many different questions that come up within this holistic perspective. Innovation plays a critical role in this.
There are many different efforts happening all over the world, Richard, as you mentioned. The Summit was a great opportunity to bring everybody together and brainstorm on where we are. We shared notes and also created a platform where we can have more synthetic conversations where we can build on each other's ideas and create a space for what evolves out of that interaction.
One of the important things to keep in mind is that when we think of sustainability or decarbonization, we tend to have certain ideas or preconceived notions of what that work entails. But realistically speaking, much of it is actually really engineering our products better. At a venue such as The Road Forward International Summit, we really had the opportunity to bring different parts of the industry, different stakeholders in the industry all together on the same platform to talk about their innovations and see how each of those innovations actually contributes to the decarbonization journey.
We had wonderful international participation. We had folks from across North America, Asia, Australia, the Middle East, Europe, and South America. That kind of really helped us get a sense of where we were across the world in our decarbonization efforts. There was also more conversation around innovation, around different kinds of materials and technologies, and how they fit into the broader decarbonization.
B: Amlan, I know you took the lead really in the content for the summit and the whole review process for the papers and those type of things. But I'm curious if there were any surprises for you in the insights that were gained at the conference or in anybody's presentations or the topics that were covered that kind of surprised you or maybe you weren't expecting to hear or learn about there.
A: Well, let me go with the part that was not surprising. That was conducting the reviews. Much of that involves a little bit of a grind. Just making sure that all the abstracts were in there, getting the reviews, sending them out, back and forth, getting all the authors to submit their final—all of that. It was in the process of preparing for the summit itself, there was a fair amount of hard work and a fair amount of coordination between different parties.Finally, when you went there, you had a sense of what you were expecting. Was I surprised in some ways? I did leave an opportunity for surprise because of the way we structured the summit. We tried not to have too many back-to-back presentations.
Instead, we focused on short starter presentations that led to conversational spaces, which were interactive, that involved the audience. We're still going through our notes and still learning from all the conversations that happened out there. But overall, I think my biggest takeaway was the importance of creating these interactive spaces, particularly when we are talking about innovation.
We were very fortunate to have a DOT and the tollway present there and have their perspectives, but also see how that sparks the need for solutions within the broader industry. We had a lot of our associate members there. Of course, we had our producer members and looking at what their priorities were and what they were bringing to the plate.
Needless to say, we also had a lot of folks from the LCA world, in terms of our LCA and EPD consultants. A lot of them walked away with different kinds of perspectives on what they needed to provide and how they could service the industry as well. Yes, I think there are surprises. There are surprises yet to come from what we learned. But I think the most important aspect, which again is probably not as surprising, but it was cool to see it happen, was the interaction and what follows from the interaction.
R: Many in our audience are familiar with the NAPA Annual Meeting, the World of Asphalt or Midyear Meeting, or even Hill Day and IMPACT. What makes this type of meeting different, and what even makes it different than some of our other technical conferences that we've had in the past?
A: That's a good question. I had a professor who was attending the conference come up to me afterwards and say, "That was awesome. I was not expecting it to turn out this way. I was expecting this to be an industry meeting." Industry meetings have their own space, and they bring together certain things and are very important in what they offer. This was definitely not a typical academic conference.
I think where the success of the summit lies, and I think the summit was very aptly named, is that it brought together, or it created a space to bring stakeholders together who typically, traditionally don't always run into each other. If you're at an industry meeting or in an advocacy space, things take on a very different role in terms of application. I think what happened here was a little bit of all of that.
We had the Climate Challenge session, which actually spent quite a bit of time. It had an academic feel. It was looking into data that was collected, studies that were done, lessons that were learned, and how that was reported. But at the same time, we also moved directly into sessions which were more about technologies that need commercialization and that are almost there.
We actually had an investor attend the conference, which was quite interesting. There was a conversation about what happens to these ideas that are well past their maturity for academic audiences. The work has been done there, and now they're at a point where they're looking for markets and really aligning with market needs.That's an in-between space that you typically don't run into in most other meetings. Of course, you also had the other end of what are we doing in the world of policy, especially internationally? What is policy looking at? What is policy prioritizing? It was a little bit of a lot of things.
I think what's unique compared to all of the other interactions is that there was more breadth here. That is what made this somewhat special and different from our traditional spaces, which tend to have the depth that they need, whether it's advocacy, whether it's an industry meeting, or whether it's an academic conference. But this kind of tied all of that together, and the goal was really to provide more of a perspective that is holistic, and that's what makes it different.
B: Amlan, you touched on the international component and how that fed into the policy discussion. I'm curious if there are other areas where that was an important component to the summit, having voices from around the world on this topic and on the different areas that were discussed.
A: Oh, absolutely. I can get into instances, but for example, with EPDs, which in Europe with their construction product regulation, EPDs are critical. Also, the way EPDs are developed in Europe is a function—there are multiple different product category rules—which is somewhat different from how we've written our product category rule and how we've been very prescriptive and how our EPDs are developed through the Emerald Eco-Label platform, which allows some amount of streamlining.
As we are updating our PCR right now, we are also looking at various experiences in Europe. At the same time, I think the conversation goes both ways because we do have the Emerald Eco-Label platform, which is quite unique in what it does for the asphalt industry. There are ways to view what we are doing here and take it and export it elsewhere.
Very technically speaking, just looking at how warm mix plays out differently in different parts of the world is also a point of discussion, because with regulations, there are parts of Europe that are going towards all warm mix. But then, how is that warm mix defined compared to how we define warm mix? Are there differences? Is it exactly the same thing?
Sometimes when we say warm mix, we are not always talking about the same thing. Getting those understandings and also recognizing what that means in terms of signaling to our industry and our stakeholders—those are just two examples, but of course, there are many other different ways in which this plays out.
R: When you put together the program for a conference, you have expectations of what's going to happen, but you never know what will actually happen. Kind of being a little bit of time removed away from it, what's a session—and I'm going to ask you to just pick one—that looking back, you're like, "That crushed it. That was exactly the message that everyone in this audience needed to hear." This is something that people can look at and say, "I can do that to make a change."
A: Okay. There was a long pause, and I wanted the long pause to be reflected because, goodness, that's a tough one because each session had its own character. I know you just asked me to talk about one session. I don't know how I'm going to do that.
R: It's like choosing a favorite kid.
A: Right. Each of the sessions were so different. But I guess the session I'd have to pick—picking is wrong because again, all the sessions are so cool—but the session on Wednesday morning, the last session, when we gave an award to Illinois Tollway, and Illinois Tollway told us about what they were doing. That was an extremely celebratory session. At the same time, if you're a contractor or if you're an agency, you look at that and say, "Okay, here are things we can take away."
I thought that had a very special place, and I'm going to break the rules here and say, so was our industry session on Tuesday, second-day morning, which was, again, "What are you guys doing? What are your priorities?" If I'm an agency, that gives me the ability to look at that and say, "Okay, now I know what is available to me." If you're a contractor, you know what resources you can use.
I think there was a session that surprised me the most. I'm breaking all my rules here. I don't care.
R: They're my rules.
A: Your rules. The session that I actually really—I put it together. I wasn't thinking much about it—but that really surprised me in terms of what it brought forth was the session on the use phase and with electrification.
When we think about decarbonization, we typically have spent so much of our time focusing on the production and the paving and the pavement life. But this was something different. I think it was probably more the ideas that could be taken away. What does that mean for the use phase? What does that mean for what does electrification of our vehicle fleet mean for our pavements? Whether it's how they perform, how we construct them, and what the use phase implications are.
BW: We've had a chance to peek back at a number of the components of the summit. I'm curious if you start to think about the summit and what impact it may have and help shaping the future, whether that's in upcoming updates to these efforts for the road forward or priorities for the road forward. Are there areas that you see coming out of the summit where it will have impacts in the future?
A: Great question. It's interesting, because I think right off the bat, I felt like what we had in the summit was this interactive space, the ability to build networks, to connect. The first thing I did was, "Hey, let's put together a LinkedIn group," which if you're listening to this and you're not part of the LinkedIn group, please join us. The point of the LinkedIn group was, can we create some cohesion so that we can continue these conversations? You can say that, "I was at that conference and I had this great conversation."
If I were to think a little bit long term, since the conference and also at the conference, we had some very intriguing discussions with some of our TRF stakeholders and TRF members. The summit was definitely one of the outcomes of the TRF effort. Moving forward, how do we grow the value that we bring to our members? I think what the summit did was it opened up different ways of looking at what we've been doing. Of course, we're going to continue to develop best practice, and of course there's going to be proceedings and reports and guidelines out of that. Of course, we're going to be doing that.
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But also more importantly, what are the ideas out there that need sparking up? Looking into the future, we talk about increased RAP, that's a priority. We also talk about warm mix. That's also a priority. At the same time, we recognize the importance of quality. There is often this question, "Can we do all of those three at the same time?"There are innovations out there, and there were some discussions around innovations that would allow you to hit all those three at the same time. We know we can, but how do we create best practice around that? I think that's definitely one of the areas that I feel like there was a fair amount of fodder at the summit for us to build on and translate that into actual practice.
Of course, with all the energy efficiency work that we've been doing through the Energy Star program, I think there are a bunch of dots out there, and I think we have—it's just been a month, a little over a month—but I think there's going to be pathways as we connect those dots and really take the next steps in dovetailing what's best practice and that we know for the industry, but also aligning that with decarbonization goals.
R: Kind of taking a step away from the summit for a second, but talking tangentially about a program that was developed, one of the things that we started doing in 2022 at NAPA, we created a Road Forward Partners Program. This was something that we really hadn't done before, and that has continued to evolve and grow. We've got a steering committee now and different, basically, avenues for people to get involved. Can you tell us a little bit more about the Road Forward Partner Program and even the steering committee that was recently developed to help guide this program?
A: That's a great question. I think the steering committee has challenged us in some ways to show the value that we are creating for The Road Forward Partners. This is a great challenge. It's a fun challenge. It's something we talk about.
I think where the excitement of this effort is: one, when we have a partner who is a Road Forward Partner, clearly they're committed, and they're in some ways trusting us with resources. So there is a certain responsibility, but also these are partners who have a lot of strength and a lot of capabilities in the area that we can build on.
Now, the question is, how do we connect them into more value in this field? We have been working to look at markets where some of our decarbonization goals are aligned with the outcomes. Customers who also have decarbonization goals, customers who also have overall 2050 or 2040 net zero goals.
We are really being able to, as suppliers for those customers, helping them meet their net zero goals because then what we are doing is we are bringing value to our customers, but also bringing our Road Forward members to connect directly with these customers, because our Road Forward members are now the upstream or supply chain partners that our customers have.
In a way, we are trying to create that bridge and create value, not just for our customers, of course, but also for our Road Forward members, because they are being viewed upon from a preferential perspective by the customers who also have aligned net zero goals.
The fun of this, of course, is that we are also creating best practices. Our Road Forward partners are already people and companies who have invested in these efforts, who already are probably engaging in our best practices. This is actually a really good outcome overall for the industry as well as for our customers. In addition to that, what we are looking forward to is probably having some of our customers become Road Forward Partners as well, because it is true that a lot of our more ambitious decarbonization goals definitely need investments, and we are always looking forward to being able to grow that part and have our customers be part of this network as well.
B: If there were one message that you would want to share with the listeners from the summit or from our podcast today, what would that be?
A: It was super energizing and exciting, and I think that is the energy boost that we all needed to go into the next year or two as we grow the TRF and deliver value for our partners as well as our customers.
R: We appreciate you coming and being a part of the podcast today and telling us a little bit more about The Road Forward Summit. For those of you who are listening and may be newer to the podcast, if you want to learn more about The Road Forward and that program, we'd encourage you to go back and listen to Season Five. During that season, we focused entirely on different aspects of the program and what we were rolling out. Give it a listen if you're more interested in that topic as well. But thanks again, Amlan, and we appreciate you being here.
A: Thank you very much. My pleasure.
B: The conversation for me really just highlighted how much I enjoy being part of the event and how the event really brought a number of voices and was quite a unique opportunity to hear from different parts of the world, different perspectives within the industry, and just bring people together on a topic that I think is extremely important for not only people in general, but our industry. It is a big part of our future.
R: I think along those lines, I'm going to go back to the mission of the Road Forward. It's to educate, engage, and empower the asphalt community. This problem or this issue isn't going to be solved just by one group. It's going to take researchers. It's going to take policymakers and owners. It's going to take contractors, everybody working together to help find solutions and then implement those solutions. Forums like this allow these groups to come together and realize, "If we all pull in the same direction, we can make progress." It started to reinforce that community and help people realize it's not just a community in the U.S., it's a global community that can really be helping us move forward in this program.