Taking on the ESG heavy lifting

Recognising the ability to actively contribute to the reduction in greenhouse gas emission, Australia’s largest private rail freight operator has set to work on achieving the goals by providing stakeholders with a document that clearly demonstrates action on key ESG priorities material to its business.

The report, which encompasses Pacific National (PN)’s intermodal, coal and bulk, regional and import and export rail services (IMEX) transport business units, reports on ESG performance in the following ways:

• Governance, including its modern slavery report

• Carbon efficiency

• Safety and wellbeing

• People and community

• Environmental impacts

Rail Express speaks to PN Head of ESG Prue Newall about the importance of the ESG report.

“The fact that it’s our third report reflects the journey that we have been on,” she said. “It’s our second report this calendar year, so is an indication of how we’re really ramping up our focus on the three pillars.

“We continue to mature our approach to ESG as we recognise that we have a responsibility to lead our industry in addressing key risks and opportunities facing our sector. Our focus is on real and tangible actions.

“We are fast‑tracking our focus on ESG, to deliver a better future for our people, communities and customers, because we don’t want to leave the heavy lifting to others.”

Environmental

Newall said PN was working to minimise its environmental footprint, focusing on the areas of land and resource management, air and noise pollution, water and waste.

“We want to ensure our environmental management practices are best in class, going beyond regulatory compliance, to ensure we minimise our impact and address community expectations,” she said.

“One of the key exciting things for us in this report is that we are launching our climate change strategy and we’ve set an interim carbon emission intensity target of a 10 per cent reduction by 2030.

“We have built a carbon emission forecasting model to help us understand the opportunities and challenges ahead as we strive to meet our emissions targets.

“Our challenge now is to identify, source and deploy the technology needed to achieve this target. We’ve worked on developing our short, medium, and longer term goals around reducing our carbon emissions and how we’re going to get there.

“We identified four streams of activity to drive carbon efficiency and respond to climate change impacts at our company.”

• Supporting transition to a low-carbon future PN will continue to advocate and support the road to rail transition to help reduce national supply chain emissions.

“We will implement the new technologies we need to measure, understand and manage fuel and energy consumption, and monitor for emerging technology and other opportunities to lower emissions within our industry,” Newall said.

• Building climate resilience

PN will mitigate the risks of climate change by completing a climate risk assessment, developing policies and governance structures to implement plans and support climate resilient decision making.

“We will also educate our employees about our climate change strategy,” Newall said.

• Decarbonising operations

Progress initiatives include purchasing carbon neutral inputs, optimising assets to drive efficiencies, reviewing mobile assets for low carbon alternative, implementing sustainability principles at corporate and operational sites, monitoring and reviewing the introduction of alternative fuels such as biodiesel and hydrogen for locomotives, and exploring the benefits of battery electric locomotives.

“And we’ve also commenced review of our supply chain to help us support the understanding of what our scope 3 emissions are, and working towards that over time,” Newall said.

• Engagement and collaboration

“ We’ll participate in industry action on development of alternative fuels and other technology for decarbonisation of our operations,” Newall said.

“We will finalise the development of a carbon emissions calculator to support our customers with calculations of their emissions impact, and work with rail infrastructure managers to improve network resilience.”

Social

PN operations impact the lives of thousands of Australians every day. It employs more than 3200 people, supporting 465 customers in 65 locations across the country.

“Because we care more, we conduct our business in ways that build sustainable relationship and contribute positively to the lives of the people and communities where we operate,” Newall said.

• Health and safety

Newall said the commitment to delivering safe, efficient, and disciplined operations that protects the safety and wellbeing of staff, including providing an inclusive and diverse workplace, was non negotiable.

“The movement of large amounts of freight and coal over vast distances demands a heightened commitment to protecting the health, safety and wellbeing of everyone in our organisation,” she said.

“This care for safety extends to our commercial partners, customers and the whole of the crucial controls necessary to prevent fatal or other outcomes.

“In terms of our safety performance, we’ve obviously got a very long history in a mature organisation and mature safety management system, and we continue to see improvements in that lead.”

For the FY22 period, there were:

• 26 per cent fewer significant incidents

• 22 per cent fewer recordable injuries

• 12 per cent fewer Signals Passed at Danger events

• 30 per cent fewer incidents requiring first aid

• Wellbeing

“Everyday our people are impacted by interactions with trains in rail corridors, collisions, and accidents,” Newall said.

“Taking care of the mental health and wellbeing of our employees has never been more important. We are starting from a strong base, with embedded programs such as RUOK? and Peer Connect to support the mental health and connection among our people.