Sustainability in Public Transport

Gonzalo FERNÁNDEZ, Infrastructure Director, EMT Madrid, Spain

Sustainability has moved from policy rhetoric to contract terms, investor diligence and boardroom risk registers. This session cuts through the global framework to focus on what is actually driving commercial outcomes for public transport operators and authorities: tightening disclosure regimes (CSRD, ISSB, TCFD), ESG-weighted procurement, green finance conditions, and passenger and employer expectations.

• From SDGs to revenue: translating the global agenda into contract KPIs and investor criteria
• The regulatory landscape shaping PT contracts: CSRD, ISSB, TCFD, EU Taxonomy and national equivalents
• ESG as a commercial filter: how financiers, authorities and clients are screening operators
• Where sustainability is creating competitive advantage — and where it is exposing legacy operators to risk

Violeta PERAN, Civil Engineer and Mobility Expert, PERANNOVA, Croatia

Public transport is one of the largest single contributors to urban decarbonisation, social inclusion and economic productivity. This session reframes PT’s contribution in terms authorities, investors and passengers actually reward: avoided carbon, health and air quality benefits, agglomeration and labour market access, and social value measured in pounds, euros or dirhams. Delegates leave with a sharper articulation of their own organisation’s value proposition and the evidence base to defend it.

• How to capture PT’s contribution: carbon, air quality, health, productivity and social value in financial terms
• Building a credible narrative for authorities, funders and passengers — beyond modal share statistics
• Positioning PT against active and shared mobility: complement, competition or integrated offer
• Workforce as a commercial asset: attracting and retaining talent in a constrained labour market
• Where UITP data, benchmarks and tools strengthen the case

Rachel HUGHES, Director, Surbon Consulting, UK and UAE, United Kingdom

Sustainability reporting is no longer a communications exercise — it is a gateway to finance, a precondition of bidding, and an increasingly audited legal obligation. Operators and authorities that report well access cheaper capital, pre-qualify for more contracts and reduce the cost of responding to investor and procurement information requests. Those that report poorly — or inconsistently across finance, operations and bid teams — face capital constraints, failed bid submissions and, under CSRD and equivalent regimes, regulatory exposure.

This session covers what to report, to whom, and how to use the right tools — from carbon accounting platforms and ESG data systems to AI-enabled reporting and bid assembly — to make the cycle pay back the effort it takes to run.

• The reporting landscape operators must navigate: CSRD, ISSB, GRI, TCFD, EU Taxonomy and national equivalents
• The operator’s reporting toolkit: carbon accounting platforms
• Using AI effectively and safely: automating data collection, draft narrative, gap analysis and evidence retrieval — while managing hallucination, data leakage and audit risk
• Assurance-ready data: building reporting on systems auditors, lenders and bid evaluators will accept
• Integrating reporting with finance and strategy — ending the disconnect between ESG reports and annual accounts
• Scope 3 and supply chain: where most PT emissions sit, and where most reporting failures happen

Violeta PERAN, Civil Engineer and Mobility Expert, PERANNOVA, Croatia

Climate events significantly impact public transport systems in various ways, affecting infrastructure, facilities, operations, and balance sheet. Extreme weather events such as hurricanes, rainfall, and high winds damage roads, bridges, railways, and stations. Flooding can lead to erosion, weakening the foundations of these structures and requiring costly repairs or replacements.

Climate events pose significant challenges to public transport systems, requiring robust adaptation and resilience strategies to ensure safety, reliability, and sustainability.

• Quantifying physical and transition risk: asset exposure, service disruption cost and revenue-at-risk
• UITP Climate Change adaptation framework – Prioritising adaptation spend where it delivers operational and commercial return
• Meeting disclosure obligations under TCFD, ISSB and emerging national regimes
• Resilience as a bid and financing asset: how lenders, insurers and authorities are scoring it
• Designing adaptation into network planning, asset management and capital investment
• Case studies: heatwave, flood and extreme weather response across bus, rail and metro operators
• Case study on how to quantify climate risks

Rachel HUGHES, Director, Surbon Consulting, UK and UAE, United Kingdom

Operator margins are increasingly set by workforce economics: driver and engineer shortages are limiting service delivery, while transport authorities are writing workforce commitments into contract award criteria and concession extensions. At the same time, the social pillar of ESG — once a soft topic — now carries hard commercial consequences through pay ratio disclosure, modern slavery reporting and supplier audit expectations. This session treats workforce as what it is: one of the largest cost lines and one of the most scrutinised dimensions of operator performance.

• The commercial case for workforce investment: turnover cost, absence, recruitment lead time and service reliability
• Social value in contracts: translating apprenticeships, local hiring and fair work commitments into measurable commitments
• Diversity, inclusion and pay equity under disclosure regimes (CSRD social standards, UK gender and ethnicity pay reporting, equivalents in GCC and EU)
• Modern slavery, labour standards and supply chain scrutiny: reporting obligations and audit expectations
• Health, safety and wellbeing as operational risk management
• Embedding sustainability behaviour at the front line: how operators actually shift driver, depot and engineering practice at scale

Christian PRIEMER, Head of Sustainability Management, Hamburger Hochbahn

Finance conditions now reward sustainability performance and punish its absence. Green bonds, sustainability-linked loans, transition finance, concessional MDB lending and blended structures are actively reshaping the cost of capital for operators, authorities and PPP vehicles — with pricing, tenor and grace periods visibly better for credible issuers. At the same time, taxonomy alignment, use-of-proceeds reporting and Paris Agreement compatibility checks have become standard diligence items, and failing them can close funding doors entirely.

This session translates the sustainable finance landscape into practical decisions for operators and authorities: which instruments suit which assets, what evidence lenders and investors actually require, and how to structure a credible funding strategy that draws on the full toolkit.

• Funding versus financing: getting the commercial framing right before approaching the market
• The sustainable finance toolkit: green bonds, sustainability-linked loans, transition finance, concessional and blended structures
• MDB and development bank routes (EIB, EBRD, ADB, AIIB, IsDB, World Bank, AfDB): eligibility, conditions and what they fund in transport
• Creditworthiness, credit ratings and the evidence base that drives pricing and tenor
• Green bonds in practice: taxonomy alignment, use-of-proceeds reporting and lessons from Paris, London and emerging-market issuers
• Leasing, ROSCos and PPP structures — and when sustainability conditions apply to each
• Case studies across bus, rail and metro: what worked, what did not, and why

Rachel HUGHES, Director, Surbon Consulting, UK and UAE, United Kingdom

Procurement is where sustainability commitments either become real or quietly fail. Scope 3 emissions, social value, modern slavery exposure and circularity outcomes are determined by specifications written months before contract signature — yet procurement teams are often under-resourced for the job. With the Procurement Act 2023, PPN 06/20, EU Green Public Procurement criteria and GCC in-country value frameworks all raising the bar, this session treats procurement as the strategic lever it is: how to specify, evaluate and contract for measurable sustainability outcomes without inflating price or legal risk.

• The regulatory landscape: Procurement Act 2023, PPN 06/20, EU GPP and GCC in-country value frameworks
• Specifications that drive outcomes: whole-life cost, whole-life carbon, circularity and social value embedded in the ITT
• Evaluation and weighting: scoring sustainability credibly without opening legal challenge risk
• Contract conditions and KPIs: turning supplier commitments into enforceable delivery
• Supply chain due diligence: modern slavery, labour standards and Scope 3 reporting
• Avoiding the common failure modes: greenwash, unverifiable claims and specifications that collapse under scrutiny

Violeta PERAN, Civil Engineer and Mobility Expert, PERANNOVA, Croatia

Transit-oriented development (TOD) and mobility integration are no longer planning concepts — they are revenue and funding instruments. Operators and authorities that shape development around transit access unlock land value capture, densify ridership catchments, reduce per-passenger cost of service, and give authorities a credible route to fund infrastructure without raising fares or general taxation. Those that don’t, build expensive systems that run half-empty past low-density sprawl.

This session covers the commercial mechanics of TOD, the MaaS and shared-mobility layer that completes the ecosystem, and the governance and regulatory conditions that make integrated planning work in practice — drawing on experience from the UK, Europe and the GCC.

• TOD as a commercial lever: the ITDP 8 principles and the move from planning concept to revenue instrument
• Land value capture in practice: development rights, betterment levies, joint development and station-area uplift
• Integrated authority models: why fragmented transport and planning governance kills TOD, and how leading cities fix it
• MaaS and shared mobility as the first- and last-mile layer: complement, competitor or integrated offer
• Using data, modelling and AI to size catchments, price development rights and stress-test ridership cases

Christian PRIEMER, Head of Sustainability Management, Hamburger Hochbahn

• • Strategy, policy and implementation
  • Transition to zero emission vehicles
  • Alternative fuels and renewable energies

Rachel HUGHES, Director, Surbon Consulting, UK and UAE, United Kingdom

Opex accounts for the majority of whole-life cost in any public transport system, and it is the phase where sustainability commitments are either delivered or quietly abandoned. Energy consumption, maintenance regimes, spare parts strategies and depot operations between them determine whether an operator hits its decarbonisation targets, meets its contract KPIs and protects its margin — or reports numbers that unravel under audit. This session focuses on the operational decisions that move the commercial and sustainability dials at the same time, and on the maintenance disciplines that keep performance credible over the life of the contract.

• Energy management as a margin lever: traction energy, depot power, regenerative braking and tariff optimisation
• Predictive and condition-based maintenance: reducing cost, extending asset life and cutting whole-life carbon
• Spare parts, remanufacture and second-life components — closing the loop between procurement and operations
• Water, waste and depot emissions: the operational detail that audits and ESG ratings now reach into
• Data, telemetry and AI-enabled operations: turning fleet and asset data into continuous efficiency gains
• Sustaining performance across the contract: evidence, KPI reporting and handover readiness