HS2: Delivering a climate change adapted and resilient railway

Abstract

The impacts of climate change are already evident. Like all infrastructure, High Speed Two (HS2) needs to be climate resilient so it can function in a future where there will be warmer and wetter winters, hotter and drier summers, and more extreme weather. Without resilience measures, climate change could affect HS2 through an increased construction programme, network performance impacts and service delays with associated costs, as well as affecting staff and passengers. The policy for HS2 is to build a ‘climate-resilient railway’, taking part in the collective endeavour to combat climate change by setting ambitious carbon dioxide reduction targets for HS2’s overall operations to be net zero from 2035 and embedding adaptation measures to increase resilience to climate change. HS2 is one of the first projects to take a holistic approach to incorporating climate change into planning, design and construction. Learning from the approach used for HS2 is set out in this article. The key outputs of this paper are descriptions of how climate resilience thinking has been embedded into all project stages, how bespoke and innovative processes have fed into industry-leading best practice, reporting and guidance, and examples of climate-resilient design solutions. It is vital to integrate climate resilience and adaptation into infrastructure projects now to ensure infrastructure is prepared for our changing climate.