Rail holds promising potential to lead the transportation sector onto a sustainable route to counter global warming. Compared to other non-active-transport modes, rail transport is energy efficient and emits a lower-amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) to move people and goods.
However, this idea that rail is sufficiently green, coupled with built-in historical organizational and individual resistance to change, creates industry complacency in a time of urgent need for action on a large scale. Such an imperative requires industry ownership for whole-lifecycle CO2 impact. Furthermore, as road transport takes steps to become carbon neutral in the next decades, if rail falls behind, any rail investment may be hard to justify.
As transportation providers aim for environmental sustainability, by reducing transportation’s 25 percent of global CO2 emissions, rail can pioneer a new model, setting a course for change. Read how to effect meaningful change.
