Responsible Investment
Rock Rail are committed to delivering sound, responsible investments with a focus on sustainable benefits for the environment, local communities and wider society. Our investment decisions are underpinned by consideration of environmental, social and governance factors, strongly aligning with our institutional investors who have a core responsibility for ESG based investment.
As part of our support for greener and more sustainable rail travel, we are working in partnership with the Birmingham Centre for Railway Research and Education at the University of Birmingham, alongside their partners at the Technical University of Dresden in Germany, to explore opportunities for greener rail solutions.
Our modern fleets are already contributing to a more sustainable railway. They are exclusively made up of electric and bi-mode trains and are set to replace many hundreds of diesel vehicles, helping to reduce harmful CO2 emissions as well as delivering significant energy efficiencies over the many old and life-expired trains they replace.
Rock works in collaboration with our rail partners, particularly manufacturing companies, to ensure that ‘safety by design’ approaches are applied to the delivery of all our assets. Rock has built a portfolio of state-of-the-art rolling stock that makes use of the latest advancements in digital technology and interconnectivity; therefore, we have made the assurance of digital assets one of our core specialisms.
Rock are leading the way in ‘cyber security by design’ by engaging in research and assurance activity to ensure that cyber security threats and vulnerabilities are understood and minimised through all stages of an asset’s life.
We take our role in supporting the local communities that interface with our trains very seriously and as a result, encourage the use of locally sourced supply chains throughout the manufacture process.
Our 135-vehicle EMU and BMU fleet will replace around 100 diesel-powered units. They are set to reduce CO2 emissions across the franchise by over 60% and provide substantial reductions in particulate matter and NOx emissions.
Exclusively made up of EMU and BMU vehicles, our fleets are able to take advantage of current network electrification and future upgrades and are set to replace over 400 highly pollutant diesel vehicles.
Our fleet of 25 six carriage electric trains entered service in 2019 on the Great Northern routes, delivering significantly improved energy efficiencies versus the life expired vehicles, built in the mid-1970s, that they replaced