Four stages. One column. Minimal disruption. The full technical story of how we transform Britain's existing street infrastructure into a distributed clean air network.
The Clean Air Initiative unit is a complete replacement lighting column — air filtration, low-power cellular connectivity, and environmental sensing pre-installed at the factory, and planted on site in a new concrete foundation.
A complete slim column with the filtration stack and sensing system pre-installed at the factory. On site, the existing lamppost and its old foundation are removed and the new column is planted in a new concrete foundation, reusing the existing power supply — the same way councils install lighting columns today. A flange-mounted version is available where a buried root isn’t possible, such as on bridges or over shallow services. Available in standard RAL colours to match local street furniture specifications.
Installation by existing street-lighting contractors — the same teams that already replace columns in councils’ renewal programmes. Designed to fit into the column replacement programmes councils already run, with minimal disruption to the street.
Air is drawn in through an intake band 300–600mm above the pavement — exhaust-pipe height, where kerbside pollution is thickest. It passes through four filtration stages before being exhausted as clean air above head height.
The filtration cartridge is a single modular unit, quick for an authorised technician to swap during routine visits. Target replacement interval: 6–12 months.
The existing column and its old foundation are removed, and the new column is planted in a new concrete foundation — the method councils’ street-lighting teams already use. The filter canister goes in from the top as one sealed unit, then the upper column with the LED light and IoT head factory-fitted.
Each stage targets a different class of pollutant. Together they achieve near-total removal of the most harmful particles and gases from processed air.
Each unit carries its own low-power cellular IoT module (NB-IoT / LTE-M) — the same class of connectivity used by councils’ existing smart streetlight systems. No fibre, no pavement works, no shared hub: every post reports independently, so a damaged unit takes out one data point, not a street. A unit that goes silent is itself an alert. For off-grid sites — rural roads, motorways, export markets — a satellite-connected variant is available.
At full speed each unit draws about 220–250W from the existing street lighting circuit, within the 250–500W a standard UK lamppost circuit typically supplies. Full speed is only needed at pollution peaks: the sensors slow the fan when the air is cleaner, bringing a quiet night setting down to roughly 90–120W in total. Solar film powers the onboard sensing suite, so monitoring runs independently of the mains.