Following the highly successful results of the 1st Rail Sustainability index data collection campaign in 2022, UIC is pleased to announce the launch of the second official data collection campaign for the Rail Sustainability index (data covering 2020-2021-2022).
From the 2022 campaign, UIC was able to use the data to promote how the railways contribute to a more sustainable world . The aggregated data has been published in our first Global Sustainability Report, of which a summary was also shared with the United Nations as part of the Global Stocktake process.
Highlights include the efforts to source renewable energy to power trains, the fact that the number of women in the workforce is increasing and waste recycling and reuse consistently improving.
2023 Collection campaign
This year’s campaign will cover the years 2020 to 2022, pursuing a collaborative effort to enable railways around the world to demonstrate their excellent credentials in terms for sustainability.
Following a consultation session at the Sustainability Action Week in March of this year, the RSi Steering committee has developed 4 new key performance indicators (KPIs) to improve the tool’s coverage on diversity and inclusion.
These are:
- Pay equity targets
- Frameworks for the gender gap: diversity and inclusion report
- Percentage of seats available to PRMs (People with reduced mobility)
- Accessibility for PRMs in rail stations
Company Scores
Following a validation and benchmarking process, UIC members will receive their individual company dashboard and scores with the corresponding “score badge” at the end of the year.
Background
The RSi tool has been developed to enable all UIC member companies to report their sustainability achievements following a framework formulated around a shortlist of seven key United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, a series of 31 KPIs, and more than 50 other collected or calculated variables.
The target audience is railway companies that are members of UIC.
The tool collects data on the following types of companies:
- Passenger rail
- Railway freight
- Infrastructure managers
- Rolling stock maintenance
- Station operation managers
- Those that carry out a mix of several of the above activities
This unique UIC enterprise has received support from the Global Reporting Initiative and is thought to help private investors in their decision to invest in sustainable assets, thus promoting the role of rail as the backbone of low carbon mobility.
The Rail Sustainability index aims to produce an accurate overview of how the railways perform in terms of sustainability, and is a complement to the Traction Energy and Emissions Database for which the UIC Sustainability Unit has been collecting data for over a decade.
Rail Sustainability index user testimony
“The UIC RSi is the only scoring method we are aware of that focuses on rail operations. Therefore, it is particularly appealing to have a solid tool at hand where we can measure our performance and continually improve it." Stefan Hackl, Rail Cargo Group
Get involved!
If you are a UIC member, you can register for free and start inputting your data from now until 30 September 2023.
