Climate Change and Adaptation

It’s clear that making the right transport choice has a huge role to play in global carbon emissions and high-speed rail plays a vital role in offering low-emission transport for the future. Train travel is already 80-90% more carbon friendly than air travel, but we are still continuing to reduce our impacts on climate change at HS1 Ltd.

To ensure our infrastructure remains resilient where any future climate change does occur, we will carry out climate change risk assessments and consider how the findings will be incorporated into our maintenance and renewals activities.

Our targets

• 2024/25: Develop adaptation strategy and implement.
• 2030/31: All HS1 energy to be net-zero carbon.
• TBC: HS1 wider emissions to be net-zero (GHG protocol).

How we’ll achieve them

HS1 Ltd is working with its partners and stakeholders to develop a green energy procurement strategy. The strategy will include a mix of options such as energy reduction and efficiency and sourcing energy from green generation.

We have already taken the first steps to achieving green energy generation. Wind and solar power lie at the heart of a procurement process that is already underway to ensure the only high-speed railway in the country runs solely on sustainable power. The phased procurement and implementation of Corporate Power Purchase Agreements (CPPAs) is a key part of our strategy which is on track to deliver the strategic objective of securing the majority (c.80%) of the systems baseload electricity requirements through renewable CPPAs by April 2025.

We have produced a Climate Change Risk Assessment and Report based on the requirements of ARP3 as required by the Climate Change Act 2008, which will enable us to develop adaptation plans for our infrastructure ensuring that it remains resilient.

HS1 Ltd is Achilles Carbon Reduce Certified