Episode Ten: Keeping things clean – our journey to net zero
How to Build a Railway is a twelve-part podcast series exploring the story behind the construction of the UK’s new high speed rail line.
Climate change presents unprecedented challenges; the actions we take today will fundamentally affect our lives and the lives of future generations. How we travel – and how we build our infrastructure – are critical to our response to this global emergency.
It’s why we’re building HS2: to be both a catalyst for growth and the most sustainable railway of its type in the world. HS2 trains will be powered by zero carbon energy from day one of operation, offering a cleaner, greener future.
This commitment plays a key part in driving our goal to make the project net zero carbon from 2035, with targets of diesel free construction sites and reducing the carbon content of steel and concrete.
In Episode ten we explore the work towards cleaner construction. From our Net Zero Carbon Plan to working closely with the supply chain and research organisations to pilot and implement low carbon materials, alternative fuels, renewable energy and new construction methods.
Featuring
- Emma Head, Technical Services Delivery Director, outlines HS2’s environmental sustainability vision and our commitments around carbon, diesel free construction sites and enhancing biodiversity.
- Andrea Davidson, Air Quality Manager, dives into the decisions taken to reduce carbon on site, adopting lessons learned from across the industry to demonstrate that it isn’t just what, but how we build.
- Daniel Marsh and Carl Desouza from Imperial College London’s Centre for Low Emission Construction talk about the support the university provides to HS2 to find out what works, what doesn’t and some of the projects they’ve collaborated on, including a retrofit project where an older part of machinery is fitted with the latest emissions reduction technology.
- And Steve Bradby, Technical and Engineering Leader at Select Plant Hire, invites us into the world of tower cranes.
Episode Ten: Keeping things clean – our journey to net zero (transcript)
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Episode transcript
This is a transcript of episode ten of HS2’s How to build a railway podcast, first published on 23 May 2023.
Fran Scott
I’m Fran Scott and this is How to Build a Railway.
Can a railway put the UK on track for Net Zero, before it even starts running? That’s the aim of HS2’s Zero Carbon action plan. By 2035, HS2 aims to achieve Net Zero.
Not only will HS2 bring the UK’s cities closer together when the trains start running, but it will bring the country closer to its Net Zero carbon goals. The trains will be running from renewable energy. They’ll make it easier for people to get out of their cars. and will reduce the demand for air travel. HS1, connecting European rail services to London at St Pancras International, has already cut flights to France and Belgium by more than 50%.
HS2 is not waiting for trains to roll before making a major contribution to cutting carbon emissions. It is making a difference right now. Construction currently accounts for 39% of global carbon emissions. HS2’s Net Zero carbon plan targets the key sources of these emissions: from the use of diesel-powered construction equipment on construction sites, and from the embodied carbon in materials like steel and concrete.
To achieve these cuts, the railway is working closely with contractors across its sites, and with academic experts, to identify the most effective interventions and demonstrate their efficiency. By doing this, they are not only cutting emissions, but they are also showing how a Net Zero approach can cut costs. All of the results of these interventions are being shared publicly through HS2’s Learning Legacy.
The public investment in the railway is paying for a new, sustainable, way to travel as part of a growing and green economy. It is also enabling construction industry suppliers to make purchases of equipment that will be able to work without emissions, for decades to come.
Emma Head is Technical Services Delivery Director, which encompasses the environment and health and safety for HS2.
2.36
Emma Head
The carbon agenda is super important to HS2. At the heart of HS2, really is a green project. It’s part of cleaning up construction. We also contribute to the government’s target of being net zero by 2050. And we have a real ambition to be a net zero company by 2025.
In January 2022, HS2 published its environment and sustainability vision. And that really is to outline our ambition in relation to environmental sustainability. And to make some clear commitments. First of all, it outlines our commitments around carbon, and making sure that we build HS2 in a cleaner and more sustainable way. And it’s also about considering our impact on the natural environment, and making sure that we try to enhance biodiversity wherever we can.
Fran Scott
Andrea Davidson is part of the environmental team at HS2. Andrea heads up the environmental sciences team, a group of specialists looking at key areas including waste, carbon, climate change, noise and vibration, and air quality. The team looks at compliance across contractors and makes sure HS2 is a truly sustainable railway.
HS2’s environment and sustainability vision is a key part of that process.
4.04
Andrea Davidson
What it does is really set out some of our missions for corporate activities, as well as in terms of operations, that we want to have zero carbon electricity from day one of operation. But in saying all of that, what we build and how we operate is great, but it’s how we build it. That’s as important.
4.28
Emma Head
In terms of cleaning up construction, we’ve been focused, for example, on the use of diesel on sites, and we made a fundamental commitment to be diesel free on all construction sites by 2029. And I’m really pleased to celebrate that. So far, we already have 19 diesel free sites, we’ve seen a lot of our contractors be really innovative, and looking at investing in different plant and mechanical equipment, looking at sources of electricity, looking at hydrogen fuels and hybrid plant so that we can really start to accelerate cleaning up our construction sites.
5.04
Andrea Davidson
In our carbon plan, we’ve set ambitions to be net zero construction by 2035. We’ve also set ambitions around reducing emissions from heavy goods, vehicles, so all the lorry movements across the project, bringing material to sites or removing spoil or waste from sites, as well as being having diesel free construction sites by 2029. And then also reducing carbon emissions by 50% from concrete and steel.
Which are all great ambitions and targets. But it’s all how we get there and what we do.
And that’s why in our diesel free plan, we’ve sort of set out some of the key activities or steps that sites can take—and should be taking—to get to that point.
Fran Scott
These steps aren’t picked on a whim. They are based on industry wide collaboration..
5.51
Andrea Davidson
So our ambitions are set based on benchmarking and reviews of what else is being done across the industry. So looking at reducing emissions from concrete and steel, for example, and route maps that maybe national highways put together, or the Institute of civil engineers. And our ambitions are really, sort of, a review of that, also looking at where we’re going to be in terms of our construction cycles across the phases.
Every single construction site is different, we’ve got over 300, across the route already, you’ve got some that have absolutely no space to move. They’ve got residences, or schools or really sensitive receptors on all of their boundaries, you’ve got others that are in the absolute middle of nowhere. And getting access to mains power is just almost impossible. So you’ve got these long stretches of route, and really small constrained sites. So there’s never going to be a silver bullet one size fits all in construction.
Fran Scott
Andrea’s team are working with a group of academics from Imperial College London, to help build that scientific grounding. Daniel Marsh is part of that team. He’s the programme manager within the Centre of Low Emission Construction, or CLEC, at the college’s Environmental Research Group.
7.14
Daniel Marsh
Imperial College London provide academic support to a lot of the innovation projects that are being run across HS2, around air quality and emissions from machines. We are working with them and their joint venture contractors to produce evidence as to what works, what doesn’t work, and where the real benefits are, to air quality across the sites, and how that impacts the health of the workers across the project.
Fran Scott
Carl De Souza is a research associate at the CLEC. He has been working to help develop a baseline, which HS2 can judge its interventions against.
7.57
Carl De Souza
One of the earliest work packages that we did with HS2 a few years ago, involves looking at their current fleet of non-road mobile machinery or NRMM
Fran Scott
He doesn’t spend his working life in a lab, deep within Imperial’s west London campus.
8.17
Carl De Souza
For us, our laboratory is the field, we use portable emissions measurement system, PEMS, as we call it, we take these lab grade instruments out into the field, we strap them on to an excavator and measure both the tailpipe concentrations so your co2 percentage, for example, or your NOx ppm, and we also measured the flow of exhaust mass from coming out of the tailpipe. And we coupled them together to give us a total emissions that comes out from a particular machine.
8.53
Daniel Marsh
Once you’ve actually established a baseline, and you’ve got a really good representation of what fleet is actually out there being used across a project, and what the emissions are of using that with diesel, you can then start to look at innovation, whether it’s using different fuels, or engine modification, or moving to completely different types of machine, whether they’re running on hydrogen or electric, and looking at the emissions that come from those pieces of technology. And then looking back at that baseline and saying, ‘What if we took all of the excavators at 20 tonnes, and we change them from diesel to electric?’ ‘What will be the impact from emissions across the whole of this project?’ So that’s why you have that baseline in place, you can start to measure the impact of intervention.
And then you can start to look at the cost of those interventions. And say, what would be the cost to the to the project? And what would be the emission reduction potential to the project? And therefore, is there value in doing this? Or where’s the greatest value in bringing in intervention?
Fran Scott
That baseline is a tool for HS2. But it also helps its contractors and suppliers make sure that the innovations and new working practices they adopt, will be commercially viable.
10.03
Daniel Marsh
We’re working with contractors, and they’re looking to break even or make a profit. If you can have interventions that’s actually going to save money and reduce emissions at the same time, then that’s an absolute Win Win and why wouldn’t they adopt those sorts of technologies?
Fran Scott
One of the biggest changes in the construction sector in recent years has been the adoption of electric equipment. This includes smaller tools, like telehandlers, essentially a forklift with a long arm supporting its forks. But it also now includes some of the biggest equipment in regular use.
10.45
Andrea Davidson
In terms of then, this next generation of plant machinery, which is really exciting, is we’ve had three of the first five fully electric crawler cranes in the UK on our sites. We’ve had a 250 Tonner at Old Oak Common and a 160 tonne also there, and then a 160 tonne on the Canterbury Road Ventilation Shaft which was our first diesel free site.
Fran Scott
Steve Bradby is technical lead for Select Plant, the Laing O’Rourke subsidiary that supplied these Liebherr ‘Unplugged’ cranes. The cranes can run for six hours on battery alone. That includes both the ‘peak’ power needed for lifting, and the constant power needed to move machines that weigh almost as much as the loads they lift. They can be plugged into the mains, keeping batteries charged as they work, or between shifts.
These are crawler cranes, mounted on tracks and with a steel lattice boom. They can travel around site, performing specific lifts. Or, they might be used in a regular location, over a tunnel shaft for example, lifting the same loads over-and-over again. They’re rated, and get their names, from the load they can lift.
The company were excited by the potential of the cranes to help meet their own climate goals. But buying them wasn’t an easy decision.
12.16
Steve Bradby
Battery life is always going to be a concern, you know. With a diesel engine, okay, God forbid, the engine should go west. But the cost of replacement of a diesel engine isn’t particularly expensive. You know, you’re probably sub 100 grand, well under 100 grand, if a battery if the batteries go, my goodness, you know, they’re vastly expensive.
Fran Scott
These are not cheap machines. The battery packs add hundreds of thousands of pounds to their cost.
12.54
Steve Bradby
The cost of the machine was substantially higher than its equivalent diesel machine. So all of a sudden, the hire rate has to match. And you know, trying to push for an increased hire rate in the current market is very difficult.
It helps with some of the projects, the likes of HS2, where they’re willing to trial and push the boundaries. And that, that is enabling us to buy equipment, I think without HS2, we probably wouldn’t be, we wouldn’t have the courage to do what we’ve done. So HS2, hats off, absolutely brilliant project, and it will push the industry on.
Fran Scott
Swapping out the power source changes how the crane is operated, and their experienced drivers would have to change how they work.
13.43
Steve Bradby
We’ve got drivers who are going from diesel operation to electric operation, and there is a difference—because a lot of the drivers drive by the noise of the winches, the noise of the engine—all of a sudden, you know, rather than driving on the accelerator, you’re actually driving in a different sort of way.
Fran Scott
By having the choice of working with the crane plugged in, or unplugged, running from batteries, Steve and his colleagues have more choices about how they use them. And it removes a risk from the site.
14.14
Steve Bradby
You can track with it plugged in. But in all fairness, it’s asking for trouble. So we ask the sites to unplug them, track them, and plug them back in. And in reality, you think, Oh, we might be tracking for 10 minutes. Well, 10 minutes of charging time is nothing, you’re not gaining a lot of amps in that time. So unplug it, get rid of that risk, get rid of all of that cable management, just track it to where you need it, ideally, plug it back in again.
Fran Scott
But these big crawler cranes are just one example of the innovative equipment that is being used on HS2 sites. While crawler cranes use power intermittently, piling rigs—similar equipment, but used to hammer foundation piles deep into the ground—work constantly.
15.01
Andrea Davidson
We’ve also had a fully electric piling rig on our site, the first Bauer piling rig started at Balfour Beatty Vinci, up in area north. They ran a trial next to a diesel piling rig to see how it would operate. Would it be able to do the same work? Would it be able to have the same strength? Again, fantastic. It kept up with the diesel version.
JCB is doing a lot of work in the hydrogen space. And they have publicised their hydrogen excavator telehandler and a refuelling unit. That should hit the market really soon. And we’re quite excited to trial some of those.
We’re working with a company called ULEMco. And with a contractor up in Area North, Balfour Beatty Vinci, we will be trialling three heavy goods vehicles that have been retrofitted to run off this dual fuelling system. It essentially works off the engine reaching a certain temperature, and then the vehicles switch to using hydrogen. But if there’s no hydrogen, it will run off diesel.
One is going to be a road sweeper, which is the vehicle probably causing the most nuisance up and down the roads, cleaning the roads to make sure that there’s no mud on the roads. The other one is a scissor lift, which is commonplace in the construction industry and a 26 tonne low loader. They are scheduled to be trialled this year.
16.28
Daniel Marsh
It’s taking the road sweeper, and saying actually, this is a road sweeper that runs on diesel. But can we take this? And can we fit a hydrogen tank? And can we have that engine that will run on diesel and hydrogen, one fuel or the other? So therefore, can you run it in clean mode? If you’re running it in an urban environment where you’ve got sensitive receptors around you? Can you reduce those emissions from the engine to water vapour?
The engine technology is very similar. So it’s really looking at the machines that are right for retrofits, where there’s potentially space on the existing chassis to put those additional fuel tanks and additional components that you need, and introduce it. But again, it will need to come with a driver training package to actually show them how the technology works and where the benefits are in that.
Fran Scott
So why not just buy new battery electric and hydrogen equipment, to use across HS2 sites?
Well, for one thing, HS2 is spending taxpayer’s money. It has a responsibility to make sure its innovations are cost effective.
And they also need to be carbon efficient. These machines use high strength and hard wearing steels, made using energy intensive processes. They’re often designed to be used for decades. Just scrapping these older, diesel-powered, machines would waste all of that embodied carbon.
17.55
Andrea Davidson
We did a lot of work with a company named Eminox, who had a retrofit technology, which is essentially an after-treatment system that you can fit to a much older dirtier piece of equipment to make it meet the latest emission standards.
You’ve got sort of another sort of key efficiency here, where instead of deploying a brand new piling rig to one of our sites, that’s going to cost upwards of 1.8 million pounds, you can take a much older one retrofitted for significantly less cost, to make it meet the latest emission standards, so cleaning it up.
Fran Scott
HS2 and its partners are working to bring older machines up to modern standards.
Regulations for construction equipment have become tighter over the last 15 years or so. These lag behind similar standards for cars and goods vehicles. Older machines, rated Stage 3a in Europe, with broadly similar ‘Tiers’ in the US, produce more emissions than newer machines, rated Stage 5. Retrofits allow these older machines to work as cleanly as newer ones.
19.08
Carl De Souza
Another project that we’ve done with HS2 was a retrofit project. This looked at taking an older bit of kit and retrofitting it with the latest emissions abatement technology that’s out there.
This means taking an older bit of machinery and bolting on aftertreatment emissions abatement technology which will help to clean up the current emissions from that machine. This can be done in the form of an SCR or DPF which is a selective catalytic reduction and diesel particulate filter, which reduces both your NOx as well as your particles that come out of the tailpipe of an older bit of machine.
Fran Scott
SCR and DPFs like those Carl describes aren’t cheap, and they aren’t small. It can be hard to fit them onto machines that are already highly optimised for weight, size, and power. But fitting them can have immediate benefits for site workers and the public.
20.14
Carl De Souza
Our role in that project was to see what the emissions were before the Eminox system was on there, and what the emissions are after the Eminox SCR DPF system was on
20.26
Daniel Marsh
This particular retrofit was to address the NOx and particulates. So it was taking technology that had been previously used on the bus and coach sector, but then transferring it across to Off Road engines, and actually proving that it works on off road engines because they are operated in slightly different ways, the drive cycles are different, and then able to actually measure that benefits. And within this particular project, HS2, I believe was going to use something like 90% of the UK is piling rig fleets, most of which would not meet the minimum emission standard required for being used within the project. But by providing a retrofit solution, it meant that we could use the existing machines available in the UK, with retrofit, rather than having to replace all those machines.
One of the things that this project demonstrated was that it is possible to take the engine beyond the stage five engine limit values. So, because it showed that we could take it beyond that, have it cleaned up, we were able to have this engine-family approved through the Energy Saving Trust for retrofit to be applied across other machines with large and medium sized engines in them. So this was the first retrofit approval for non-road mobile machinery for NOx and particle reduction in the UK.
Fran Scott
On any construction site, a key source of carbon and particulate emissions is often diesel generators. And if you are using more electric kit, then surely you’re going to need more generators?
Not on an HS2 site.
22.09
Andrea Davidson
What we don’t want is to have electrical equipment working on site and charged by a diesel generator around the back.
Fran Scott
One way to avoid this is with new generators, fuelled by hydrogen. This is an emerging technology, but it is one that has great potential.
22.28
Andrea Davidson
We had a GeoPura Siemens Energy hydrogen fuel cell generator on our site, we had two that replaced a 250 KVa generator, they worked absolutely fantastically, it was, it was really flawless, it was an excellent way to show site teams that you could have a reliable solution that wasn’t a diesel generator, with the only by-product being water.
22.54
Daniel Marsh
it wasn’t to see if there’s a cost benefit, because the fuel cost at the moment is more expensive. But it was to demonstrate the fact you can run a site… There’s no sort of energy security risks of running a site on hydrogen fuel cell and it’s a showcase to bring it into site, let the industry see it. This is what it looks like. This is how it works. This is where it goes. And this is what it does. But actually, you still have a shipping container that’s giving you energy. So it’s not that dissimilar to looking at the diesel generator. It’s just you don’t see the big black cloud of black carbon being pumped up a flapper cap.
Fran Scott
Daniel and Carl are working on another project, which helps make sure that when generators must be used, they are used as efficiently as possible.
23.32
Daniel Marsh
We look at other things on construction sites, and the way that electricity is used on construction sites. So, as well as trying to produce clean energy, it’s about how you reduce the requirement of energy on the sites. So other projects that we’ve worked on with HS2, and Balfour Beatty, Sunbelt, and Invisible Systems, has been looking at what they call the EcoNet system.
EcoNet is a way of having a smart power management system in place. So actually, you can reduce the size of the generators you’re using on your construction site, you’re producing less power, but you’re using power more efficiently across the day. And that can be just by prioritising where the power needs to be at any point in the day. So early in the operation of the site, the workers are coming in, they need to have dry clean PPE to wear out on the site. And you might see the kettle going on a lot. And there’s a big demand in that part of the accommodation block. So why would you put the recharging of electric vehicles in at the same time, when maybe you can actually be doing that process later in the day when there’s less demand in other areas?
Fran Scott
Modern tower cranes are, almost without exception, electrically powered. But still, they often draw that electricity from a generator.
24.52
Steve Bradby
When I look at tower cranes, and them being paired with generators, I think it’s an absolutely dire thing.
Fran Scott
Select have taken a different approach on HS2 sites. Some generators may still be needed, most often at the start of operations, but these can now be much smaller.
25.09
Andrea Davidson
An innovator called Punch Flybrid has produced a flywheel technology that reduces the size of the generator you would need to deploy with a tower crane. And again, reducing the size of your generator straightaway, less fuel burn per hour, fewer emissions.
25.26
Steve Bradby
The bulk of our cranes do go on mains, we see 10 to 20% of the fleet on generators. Often they’re on a generator at the start of the job because there’s a delay getting power to site, and occasionally there simply isn’t the power throughout the job. So and there is a slight difference, the Select fleet are very large capacity cranes. So the bulk of our fleet is over 24 tonne capacity, a substantial amount is over 32 tonne capacity. And some of it is over 66 tonnes of capacity. Which in the tower crane world is big. So therefore their power supply matches that, it’s big.
Fran Scott
That power demand isn’t used throughout the day. Rather, a burst of power is needed as the crane starts lifting.
26.15
Steve Bradby
Every time that the operator goes to start a mechanism, there’s a sudden surge in demand: exactly the same as accelerating from the traffic lights, your power requirement to get the vehicle moving is substantial, and it drops off very quickly.
It’s the same with a crane. There’s a sudden surge in demand as the mechanism gets moving, and then that levels off.
Fran Scott
There’s a simplistic view that the power supply to a crane must match its peak demand. But with a Punch Flybrid, crane suppliers like Steve can think instead more about its averaged energy consumption.
26.51
Steve Bradby
What we do with the Punch Flybrid is, that is a flywheel. So we charge it up from the mains, it pulls relatively small power, and it sits there spinning. So it’s a four kilo flywheel, sitting in a vacuum, powered by a 120 kilowatt motor. So it sits there just spinning, it’s low resistance, so it doesn’t draw much.
When it senses the crane is demanding power, it delivers power. So it delivers a sudden surge, up to around 120 amps. And doesn’t sound like a lot. But what that does, it takes all the effort off a generator, and allows the generator time to pick up.
A generator will sit there at a constant speed. But obviously, it has a varying load. So when the crane suddenly says ‘I want, I need power’ it will load up that generator and it has to react, because if it slows down too much the frequency drops. And the crane will stop working.
That generator has to be over-sized. So it has to almost accelerate past the demand, and then level off. And what the Flybrid does is it allows a much smaller engine to do that. So effectively, it delivers the peak, and then lets the engine recover and deliver the constant.
Fran Scott
Some of Select’s biggest tower cranes are ‘luffers’. Instead of having a jib that sticks out flat at 90° from the mast, they have a ‘luffing’ jib that can be angled up and down. That lets the crane reach higher, and avoids the need for it to move over neighbouring sites or public spaces.
28.35
Steve Bradby
To give you an example on one of the big cranes, which is a you know, a 66 tonne luffer, it requires… so the requirement from manufacturer says it would need a 650 KVa generator. Now 650s don’t really exist, readily available, so the nearest size that we can pick up is 800. So we’ll stick an 800 KVa generator powering this crane. If we then put on a Flybrid system, we can drop that generator down to 320 KVa.
Fran Scott
That delivers real savings, both in terms of carbon, and in terms of cash.
29.13
Steve Bradby
It saves the site thousands of pounds in fuel and hire.
It’s almost that much a week saving. It’s vast, the saving. It’s so logical. Not only do you get your ‘green stamps’, that you’ve something that totally makes sense. But you’re actually saving money at the same time. So as sustainability things go this one is absolutely phenomenal.
Fran Scott
It even allows these giant cranes to be plugged straight into the grid.
29.42
Steve Bradby
We’ve done trials, again for HS2. we’ve trialled it on the mains. So again, reducing the size of the supply required to power that crane. So it drops that down.
Fran Scott
Dragging a high power cable around a construction site isn’t like pulling an extension lead out to power your mower.
30.02
Steve Bradby
It also means that the power cable size from the mains to the Flybrid can reduce as well. So if you can get that Flybrid next to the crane, you can reduce your power cable sizes, which not only saves you in copper, but also saves you all the cost of someone dragging those cables in. And cable pulling is a specialist thing. And we bring in companies for the bigger cables to drag them across.
Fran Scott
But the real savings come from cutting out the generator.,
30.33
Steve Bradby
Assuming that that crane was working for 60 hours a week, over 50 weeks, so roughly a year, your generator, standard 100 kVa generator will be costing you around 200 with fuel around 230,000 pounds for the year to run your crane. If you stick it with a Flybrid, that drops around 105,000. So the saving, it’s huge!
Fran Scott
We all can find ourselves at work, sometimes waiting to move on to our next task. In the office, or at home, the heat and lights are on, we can have a quick go at today’s Wordle, and it’s all efficiently powered off the grid.
But for a crane operator, sitting in the cab, waiting on a truck to bring the next load to site, can mean running a huge generator, just to power a little air conditioning unit.
To keep emissions down, operators need to make sure that they only use power when it’s needed. The approach is called ‘anti-idling’.
31.43
Andrea Davidson
We’ve done a bit of work with the Supply Chain Sustainability school, and some of our other partners, contractors or academic partners, to produce an anti-idling toolkit really sets up some reminders for the industry of why it’s so important for an operator to switch their engine off. Imperial College London also gave a really good overview of exposure, what is the operator actually being exposed to on a daily basis, why it’s so important for their own health to turn their engine off.
32.13
Daniel Marsh
As we’re introducing new technology into the construction industry, it’s about addressing operator behaviour, and how those machines are actually being used. And whether or not you can bring in further efficiencies by having anti idling. And actually, just looking at how the machines are used across the sites you can you can definitely bring some benefits
32.33
Andrea Davidson
The great benefit there is yes, we talking about cost saving, we’re talking about carbon saving, but there’s a huge emission benefit, reducing the emissions coming out of the tailpipe or reducing exposure, which is really where we need to get to as an industry.
Fran Scott
HS2 is developing a methodical approach to cutting carbon, and particulate, emissions from its sites.
It’s supporting equipment suppliers, allowing them to invest in new electric equipment, and emerging technologies like hydrogen fuel cell generators.
It has, effectively, retrofitted almost all of the UK piling rig fleet, bringing it up to the latest emissions standards.
All of this equipment can now be used on other projects, keeping the country on track for Net Zero.
But can the lessons the railway and its academic partners have learned, be spread across the industry?
Andrea thinks it can.
33.36
Andrea Davidson
So essentially, it creates reliable case studies for these different companies to highlight their capability. And to showcase that it’s been trialled and tested on a different site. What the construction Leadership Council is aiming to do is create a depository of case studies. So the industry has a central location to go to.
Fran Scott
The lessons learned from projects like this will be shared across the industry. This is HS2’s ‘Learning Legacy’ programme. This is a deep, broad, and easily searchable public database of case studies and papers that will help other project owners and contractors to implement HS2’s innovations on their own sites. This will help fulfil HS2’s mission to help the entire UK construction industry move to Net Zero.
It can be found online by searching for ‘HS2 Learning Legacy’. A link is included in the show notes.
34.29
Carl De Souza
All the projects are reported back to the industry in the form of a report that’s available via the HS2 media centre. We are also in the process of academically writing up these for peer reviewed publications. The former might be a bit more interesting to some rather than the latter. But yes, all of this is out in the public domain.
Fran Scott
The lessons learned from the project aren’t just relevant to the directors of big construction firms. Everyone on site can learn from them.
35.08
Emma Head
At HS2, we formed something called the Green network. And that’s an employee network for everyone to get involved in the green agenda. You know, HS2 is a once in a generation programme. And many of the people that work on HS2 really want to be part of the legacy of the programme. And so we’re really committed to the carbon Net Zero agenda. By being part of the green network, we’re able to build an environmentally conscious workforce, we’re able to offer training and help people measure their own personal carbon impact and make better, greener choices for example on how they choose to travel, the types of car they choose to buy. And we’re generally looking to embed a consciousness across HS2 around sustainability and carbon.
Fran Scott
The investment in HS2, as a long-term project of national significance, allows the UK to achieve goals far beyond just increasing rail capacity.
36.12
Emma Head
HS2 is a once in a lifetime investment by the UK Government. And it’s absolutely important that our role as client, we really do lead the way on the green agenda. HS2 is working with National Highways and Network Rail and other key government clients, to make sure that we are investing in innovation and developing solutions for future infrastructure projects.
HS2 at its heart is a green project. We really are about offering carbon net zero from day one of operation. And so making a greener and cleaner method of transport. And I think the legacy for HS two will be that infrastructure for future generations.
But in addition, we will have also learned some lessons for construction along the way, and will have developed new working practices and new materials to really help to clean up construction.
Fran Scott
Next time on How to Build a Railway
Emma Head
On HS2 we’ve seen our workforce work 60 million hours in the last 12 months. And that’s only in the construction of phase one.
Dame Judith Hackitt
The challenges facing HS2 are, are not that different from many other infrastructure projects. But what makes HS2 so different is the sheer scale of things.
Fiona King
One of the most exciting things about this project—and probably what really attracted me—was that we’re actually trying to really emphasise the importance of looking at health from the very early stages of design, right through construction.
Fran Scott
Your host has been me Fran Scott
Thanks to our guests Emma Head, Carl De Souza, Andrea Davidson, Daniel Marsh, and Steve Bradby.
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