(Article from Journal 2022/04 Vol140 Pt2)

VISION: A RAIL INFRASTRUCTURE COMMUNITY THAT INSTINCTIVELY DELIVERS A ZERO-CARBON SUSTAINABLE RAILWAY

MISSION: RECOGNISING CLIMATE CHANGE AND DECARBONISATION CHALLENGES IN RAILWAY INFRASTRUCTURE, SHARING SOLUTIONS AND BEST PRACTICE, AND FOSTERING THEIR ADOPTION THROUGH COLLABORATION TO ENABLE POSITIVE CHANGE.

By the time this article goes to press the PWI’s first two technical conferences of the year will have taken place; the Climate Emergency in March swiftly followed by Electrification: Delivering the Business Case in April. We purposely sought out real life examples of what people are doing across industry to make a positive contribution to both of these important subjects and hope you saw the benefit in that. In addition to the technical conferences we will also have run a series of Lunch and Learn events on the subject matter as a means of knowledge sharing and encouraging thinking and debate.

The Climate Change Adaptation and Decarbonisation Committee (CCA&DC) made a commitment to provide a written article on some aspect of this vast subject in each of the Journals. This edition contains an article entitled Whole Life Carbon Management in the rail industry, authored by three colleagues at Atkins, Nick Rothwell, Hector Lyons and Dr. Mohammad Safari Baghsorkhi. The article considers the use of the RSSB Rail Carbon Tool (RCT) for assessing the whole life carbon for a particular project. My understanding is that individual organisations have also developed their own carbon assessment tools, and I do wonder how these various tools align with each other and how they are regulated across industry. Perhaps this is something the PWI’s CCA&DC can explore in the fullness of time.

I’m very pleased to report that in recent months the Committee has strengthened it’s relationship with the National Engineering Policy Centre (NEPC). This organisation connects policy makers with critical engineering expertise to inform and respond to policy issues of national importance, giving policymakers a route to advice from across the whole profession, and the profession a unified voice on shared challenges.

The Centre is an ambitious partnership, led by the Royal Academy of Engineering, between 43 different UK engineering organisations representing 450,000 engineers.

One of the projects the NEPC is currently running is entitled “ Net Zero: A systems perspective on the Climate Challenge” and has a number of critical workstreams contained within this.

Representatives from the PWI’s CCA&DC have been welcomed by the NEPC to become involved with various aspects of the work. Peter Dearman is a member of a working group looking at the appropriate use of hydrogen, Jenny Smith will represent us on a working group looking at carbon content of materials which is just about to launch and we have also been invited to join the governance overview group. I will provide updates on these workstreams as they develop and progress.

I would, however, like to draw your attention to a series of videos (link on the right) the NEPC are producing in relation to achieving Net Zero through a systems approach. The series is made up of five short films, two of which have already been published. The first defines a systems approach to net zero and the second looks at achieving net zero within the built environment. One of the remaining three video explainers will be on the subject of transport, which will be of particular interest to PWI members.

At the last meeting of the CCA&DC the conversation turned to what we could do next. The PWI has recently responded to the Great British Railway’s Call for Evidence, and the approach taken to develop the response was through a series of ‘thought leadership’ events with our population of fellows, which worked quite well. We are currently considering this or a similar approach in delivering a thought leadership event on the subject of climate change and decarbonisation. The event will be hosted by members of our Committee including Stuart Kistruck and Peter Dearman. The next few months will be spent in preparation ready for the main event later in the year.