Sam Sherwood-Hale spoke to Dr Jenny Wood, Head of Sustainability at Magellan, about what she has found distinctive about rail’s approach to sustainability, how data and ticketing technology can help operators reduce their environmental footprint and what it will take to turn corporate net zero commitments into operational reality
SSH: You came to rail from FMCG and pharma sectors where sustainability has been shaped heavily by regulation and consumer pressure. What has surprised you most about how this industry approaches the problem?
JW: One thing that stood out early was the role of the Procurement Act 2023 and the social value requirements it introduces. Social value now carries a minimum ten per cent weighting in bids, which means sustainability becomes something train companies and suppliers have to demonstrate in tangible, local terms. It is worth being clear about what social value actually encompasses, because it is broader than it might sound. It includes community engagement, environmental impact, employment initiatives and economic stimulation: all the factors that add value in a local area across multiple dimensions.
That is actually quite a useful mechanism because it breaks targets down into something concrete and visible in specific communities. It is a bottom-up discipline that does not exist in the same way in the consumer goods industry and facilitates the delivery of broader corporate sustainability goals in a bite-sized way. That said, there is a balancing act and connecting that local social value work upwards into the broader commitments is not automatic. Active work is required to make sure these two streams are strategically linked.
Where I notice the most difference from my previous sectors is in the relationship with the consumer, the travelling public. In FMCG, consumer demands and scrutiny filter directly into retailer expectations and supply chain pressure. In rail, the passenger is ultimately the end customer and does make choices with their feet, but that pressure has traditionally been less visible at an industry level. There is something to learn there from sectors that have had to make the consumer relationship central to how they think about sustainability and their commercial offering.
SSH: Train companies and supporting industries have set measurable environmental and social targets. How do you translate a corporate roadmap into decisions that actually change how an operator runs its network?
JW: Any sustainability initiative has to carry a credible business case, it needs to be viable, achievable and desirable or it will not attract the investment and support it needs. That means being clear about what the benefits are in financial terms, presenting clear timelines and evaluating versus the cost and risk of doing nothing. For longer horizon commitments such as net zero by 2050, the risk of inaction is sometimes easier to articulate than the return on investment, and businesses are beginning to see climate risks materialising in operational terms now. The framing therefore has to connect strategic targets to tangible, value adding actions for decision-makers.
Scope 3 emissions are a useful example of this. For many businesses Scope 3 emissions represent the most significant proportion of their carbon footprint, meaning value chain emissions rather than emissions from their own direct operations. That touches every part of the business and every job function. When you start to map that honestly, it makes clear that decarbonisation cannot be driven solely from a sustainability team. It requires engagement across the organisation and with suppliers, and that requires people to understand what Scope 3 actually means in the context of their own work.
SSH: Fully digital systems can also exclude certain customers. How do you design for sustainability without designing out the people who are hardest to reach?
JW: Digital-first approaches can create barriers for customers who lack reliable connectivity, are less comfortable with technology, have disabilities that affect how they interact with digital systems, or simply do not own a smartphone. Collectively these are not edge cases and numbers could be higher in some areas depending on local demographics. If a system is built without accounting for them, it is not genuinely sustainable in the broader sense of the word.
The more productive approach is to treat inclusive design as a minimum standard from the outset rather than an afterthought. Solutions built to accommodate the full range of customer needs can potentially end up working better for everyone. That need not be a constraint on innovation; it is actually a driver of better design.
SSH: LENNON and similar systems offer real visibility on how customers move across the network. How much of that data is currently being used to its full potential from a sustainability perspective?
JW: LENNON’s capacity to handle detailed passenger flow data is a longer-term ambition rather than a current reality and is dependent on the rollout of tap-on, tap-off infrastructure across the rail network. The team are currently working on replacing the legacy system with a new allocation service and migrating the system to Google Cloud. In the next couple of years, LENNON will be ready to do revenue distribution on real time passenger data, but delivering this in practice will require the complementary rail network upgrades. But when it is available, it should drive much more informed decisions about where services are most needed, where they can be rationalised and where emissions can be reduced.
The question is whether operators are preparing now for how they will use that data when it arrives. The opportunity is significant. Knowing how customers actually move across the network means being able to match capacity to demand, reduce underused services and design a railway that is more efficient and more responsive to need.
SSH: Closing the gap between passengers’ intentions and their actual travel choices is central to modal shift. What can ticketing innovation concretely do to move that needle?
JW: The main barriers are practical ones. Getting to and from the station, understanding the fare structure, having confidence that the system will work if something goes wrong. Ticketing innovation that addresses those friction points can make a meaningful difference to whether someone chooses the train over the car.
Mobility as a service is the direction that makes most sense from a passenger perspective: a single purchase that covers the full journey, integrating multiple transport modes with transparent pricing and automatic updates if disruption occurs. Beyond that, there is the longer-term possibility of truly frictionless travel, where the system identifies the customer and digital ticket without the phone needing to leave the pocket. The goal in all of this is to make the train the easiest and most reliable choice rather than simply one of several options.
Fare complexity is also a significant deterrent, particularly for customers who are less familiar with how the system works. Making it straightforward to find the most appropriate ticket is not a minor convenience issue; it directly affects whether people use the network.
SSH: Many companies use EcoVadis and similar tools to set sustainability targets for their supply chains. Hitting a procurement metric is one thing; actually shifting supplier behaviour is another. What does meaningful engagement look like in practice?
JW: The starting point is recognising that suppliers are at different stages in their sustainability journey, and that a compliance-only approach tends not to move things forward. If there is a gap between what is expected and what a supplier can currently deliver, the productive response is to understand the reasons behind the gap and agree a corrective plan rather than simply demanding immediate compliance.
In practice this means investing time with your suppliers to understand where the gaps originate from. Skills, tools, capacity, awareness: the obstacles vary. Suppliers who receive structured support, including workshops, training and access to relevant resources, are far more likely to make progress than those who receive written requests and nothing else. In the context of Scope 3, collaboration is not optional, you cannot reach net zero within the bounds of your own organisation.
SSH: Rail has traditionally been slow to let regulation drive innovation rather than compliance. Where do you see the industry’s appetite for getting ahead of sustainability requirements?
JW: The move towards nationalisation should help here. Long-term infrastructure investment in rail requires exactly the kind of planning horizon that a fragmented, franchise-based structure makes difficult. Bringing the network together creates the conditions for thinking about decarbonisation holistically and on the timescale it actually requires.
There are also external pressures that will increasingly shape the conversation. Passenger expectations are not yet as vocal as consumer expectations in retail, but that could shift as climate change starts to impact people’s lives more and more. There is also growing evidence of people, particularly the younger generation, seeking purpose driven employment that aligns with their own values who are actively selecting companies on the basis of their sustainability goals and ethics. This creates a recruitment and retention dimension that boards are beginning to take seriously.
SSH: How do you get employees across a large business to genuinely change the way they work, and what role does that play in cutting Scope 3 emissions?
JW: Scope 3 is a value chain measure that runs through every part of an organisation: employee commuting, business travel, waste, procurement, the choices people make day to day. Because it touches every role, the sustainability team cannot address it alone. You need the workforce to understand what it means and what they can do within their own areas.
The challenge is that general carbon literacy is quite low, and not just within businesses. The average person hears a great deal about climate change but may not have a clear sense of where the most significant impacts actually come from or what the most meaningful actions are. There is a tendency to focus on visible, everyday choices, recycling or reducing single-use plastic, while the bigger levers remain less understood. The WWF states that if everyone in the world were to live like the average UK resident when lifestyle factors are rolled up, we would need 2.4 planets to sustain us all. This gives a sense of the gap between general awareness and the scale of what is actually involved.
That context matters for how businesses approach internal education. If employees do not have a working understanding of carbon emissions and how they connect to specific activities, it is very difficult to convert a corporate net zero commitment into changes in day-to-day behaviour. The argument for carbon literacy training is that people who understand their own processes and responsibilities will identify opportunities that a sustainability team would never find from the outside. Empowering employees with that knowledge is not just good practice; it is one of the practical levers for actually delivering an emissions reduction programme at scale.
SSH: Where does Magellan see the biggest opportunity to contribute to a greener railway?
JW: Electrification remains the single largest opportunity. Only 38 per cent of the UK rail network is currently electrified, and expanding that coverage is essential to reducing direct rail emissions. The case becomes stronger as the grid continues to decarbonise. It is worth noting that 60 miles of targeted infill electrification around key hubs including Liverpool, Leeds and Birmingham could enable the decarbonisation of two million train miles annually. That is a significant return on a specific, achievable investment.
Beyond electrification, data has a central role, this is how we believe we can help the industry. Giving operators real visibility into how the network is being used and empowering better decisions on capacity, routing and service planning. Reducing emissions is partly about infrastructure, but it is also about running what exists more intelligently.
SSH: The RSSB’s climate resilience assessments show progress on adaptive capacity, but adaptation and emissions reduction are not the same challenge. From Magellan’s position as a technology and data provider, where do you see the biggest role for what you do in helping operators prepare for climate impacts?
JW: Resilience is about keeping the network functioning and keeping customers choosing rail, even as conditions become less predictable. That means live disruption information, alternative route planning, and systems that respond automatically when something goes wrong rather than placing the burden on the passenger to work it out themselves.
Data from platforms like LENNON will also support more proactive infrastructure planning. If you can identify the most critical and heavily used routes and cross-reference them against climate risk assessments, you can build a clearer picture of where investment in resilience is most urgent. The goal is a network that adapts ahead of time rather than one that responds after the fact.
