Background
The British rail industry is highly devolved with a great many organisations involved in operation, management and maintenance of the railway and rail services. Up to now there has been no rail-sector specific guidance or standards for carbon accounting, leaving organisations with inconsistent carbon footprint boundaries, differing approaches to data collection and reporting, and uncertainty in how to approach a number of rail specific carbon accounting challenges and issues. There is also a wide range in carbon maturity of organisations in the sector.
The RCAF project set out to provide a solution to these issues, by developing standardised, robust and easy to follow carbon accounting guidance for the British Rail industry, aligned to existing carbon accounting and reporting standards and requirements such as the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, ISO 14064, Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi) and others.
Logika Group, partnering with Aether, Ecolyse and Carrickarory Consulting was commissioned by RSSB to develop the RCAF. The team worked with experts within the RSSB, as well as industry experts across the rail industry and Government to develop the framework and guidance. This extensive collaboration strengthens the RCAF, ensuring it meets the needs of the rail sector, and provides comprehensive and easy to apply guidance for all users.
The Rail Carbon Accounting Framework
The RCAF provides step-by-step carbon accounting and reporting guidance for passenger rail operators, rail freight operators, rolling stock companies, and infrastructure managers such as Network Rail.
Using the RCAF, rail organisations can report their annual carbon emissions with confidence in their accuracy and scope, and with consistency to other rail sector organisations. By combining data from all players in the sector, the rail industry as a whole can see how it’s tracking.
The aim of the RSSB’s 2023 Sustainable Rail Blueprint is to embed net zero management capabilities within the rail industry. The step-by-step guidance in the RCAF means individuals and teams working in and for a given rail organisation now have the tools they need to accurately assess the carbon emissions of the organisation. The guidance is also designed to:
- plug gaps in knowledge of carbon accounting;
- provide certainty and consistency of approach on specific rail-sector carbon accounting issues and uncertainties; and
- provide guidance tailored to specific emission sources and data of rail organisations.
The RCAF covers the full range of carbon accounting: in addition to guidance on how to quantify carbon emissions, rail industry players can also access guidance on setting carbon reduction targets, with practical options for investing in emissions reduction projects and assessing the pay-off of those projects.
Outcomes
A key outcome of the RCAF is better carbon data, to provide accurate carbon metrics and enable better decision making. This includes what for many organisations in the sector will be a significant advancement in the assessment of their Scope 3 emissions, which means the rail sector will have a better understanding of all their emission sources, beyond just electricity and fuel use. This includes key areas such as rail infrastructure maintenance, renewal and enhancement as well as rolling stock manufacture and maintenance.
The UK rail sector continues to decarbonise through the electrification of the network, decarbonisation of the UK electricity grid, introduction of emerging rolling stock technologies such as battery trains and electrification of supporting services and infrastructure such as buildings and road fleets. These measures further reduce the carbon intensity of rail passenger travel and rail freight, and enhance the role of rail in the UK’s transition to net zero. The RCAF allows electrification and other carbon reduction initiatives to be quantified in a standardised manner, to allow more robust, comparable emissions reporting going forward, both for individual rail organisations, and for the British rail sector as a whole.
Laurence Caird, Technical Director at Logika Group and Project Manager for the RCAF project: "The rail industry has a vital role to play in decarbonising passenger travel and freight movement in Britain. RCAF will help accelerate, harmonise and simplify carbon accounting and reporting practices and allow organisations more time and resource energy to focus on actions to avoid and reduce carbon emissions and decarbonise our railways."
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