Climate change maturity

GB rail is already on the path to improving its climate readiness. But there’s more work to be done. We’re annually assessing rail’s climate change maturity so that we can help industry respond to the most pressing challenges.

2024 Rail Climate Change Maturity Assessment 

Last year, we worked with the Great British Railways Transition Team and Climate Sense to assess GB rail’s ability to adapt to the changing climate. The result was a customised version of the Climate Capacity Diagnosis & Development (CaDD) tool. CaDD can analyse and assess an organisation’s ability to manage climate change risks and opportunities.

This is known as ‘adaptive capacity’.

This year, we’ll use CaDD to assess and update industry’s 2024 adaptive capacity. The assessment will:

• Broaden industry participation.
• Allow for more thorough insights.
• Enable comparisons with the 2023 results. 

It will allow us to:

• Update industry’s adaptive capacity performance level.
• Improve understanding and collaboration.
• Monitor performance over time.
• Allow industry colleagues to compare year-on-year progress.
• Drive continuous improvement against the ‘prepared for a changing climate’ flagship goal, as set out in the Sustainable Rail Blueprint. 

Get involved

We invite organisations to take part in the 2024 assessment. 

Those who do will get a full CaDD report about their current adaptive capacity status. They’ll also get guidance on the actions that can help them improve their adaptive capacity. And they’ll be able to monitor their progress against their 2023 results.

What did we find in 2023?

The 2023 Rail Climate Change Maturity Assessment had some key findings that helped us shape our next steps.

The 2023 maturity assessment was highlighted in the government’s Third National Adaptation Programme. This sets out the actions that governments and others will take to adapt to the effects of climate change in 2023–2028.