UK: The Scotland’s Railway partnership of Network Rail and ScotRail has published a five-year Climate Action Plan setting out aims to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions in 2024-29.
There are five priority areas:
- Climate ready: preparing the railway and organisations for anticipated changes in the climate;
- Net zero: planning to reduce operational (Scope 1 and 2) emissions by 65% against a 2018-19 baseline and improve data relating to the wider carbon footprint (Scope 3) and enable total emissions reporting by the end of Control Period 7.
- Environmental management: using risk and assurance-supported data to set yearly targeted objectives to reduce environmental incidents;
- Biodiversity: aiming to increase biodiversity by 4% from the 2020 baseline;
- Social value: targeting a 25% increase in initiatives assessed with the Rail Social Value Tool.
The plan released on August 7 incorporates previously published climate adaptation objectives, which will see more than £400m contributed towards the resilience of the network against extreme weather and future changes in climate.
This includes more than £100m on earthworks, £100m on lineside infrastructure including drainage, and more than £40m on structures.
Climate adaptation plans will be developed for places that are identified as being most susceptible to the impacts of future changes in weather patterns.
