Sustainability at TransPennine Express

Our approach to sustainability is defined by understanding our contribution to society, the economy, and the environment, and what is materially important to our colleagues, our customers, and our stakeholders. A key focus is to prioritise where our efforts can have the biggest positive impact to meet customer needs, levelling up and connectivity, and delivering environmental, social, and financial sustainability across TPE operations.

Through this understanding, we have developed our strategy in line with the rail industry's sustainable development principles and UK policy goals for greener transport and modal shift.

The structure of our strategy sets out our priority areas under four pillars of sustainability:

Carbon and air: this considers our carbon footprint, resilience to climate change and impact on local air quality

Beyond carbon: this is focused on zero waste to landfill, embedding circular economy thinking into our operations; reducing disturbance and impact on water resources, whilst setting out our good for nature ambitions

Our people: this takes forward our goals for a diverse and inclusive workforce that can reach its potential, whilst developing succession plans and competency frameworks through proactive career development opportunities 

Our customers and communities: this embeds an approach for ensuring an accessible train service, bringing communities to the heart of our thinking and delivering on a positive contribution to society through social value

Medium to long-term objectives with milestone targets are established within this strategy, which will be progressed via actions in our annual sustainable development plan to ensure continual improvement. Progress updates against our targets will be published within our annual sustainability report.

Our objectives and targets continue to be subject to review considering the prevailing Sustainable Rail Strategy for the rail industry.

Our journey

Did you know?

• Since 2015/16 we have reduced our scope 1 and 2 carbon footprint by 12 percent (Scope 1 emissions are associated with the fuels that we consume such as diesel and natural gas. Scope 2 emissions are associated with the purchase of electricity, which we consume)
• Our Nova train fleet, which includes bi-mode and electric trains, helps reduce our customers’ carbon impact by 77 per cent compared to travelling by an average car (measured as carbon dioxide equivalent)
• We have recently added smart water meters to all except one of our stations, which helps us to monitor consumption, identify and fix leaks