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
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’.
We used CaDD to assess and update industry’s 2024 adaptive capacity. The assessment has:
- Broadened industry participation.
- Allowed for more thorough insights.
- Enabled comparisons with the 2023 results.
This work benefits the rail sector by:
- updating industry’s adaptive capacity performance level
- improving understanding and collaboration
- monitoring performance over time
- allowing industry colleagues to compare year-on-year progress
- driving 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 future assessments.
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 results from previous years.
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.
-
The results
Our baseline review of the adaptive capacity across the GB rail sector found that:
- Organisations scored, on average, just above a response level 2. This reflects a ‘stakeholder responsive status’, meaning they acknowledge the need to address climate change adaptation and are responsive to sector-level interventions.
- The sector is advanced compared with other national and international CaDD users.
Read the full 2023 report here.
