Interview: Hitachi's Nick Hughes on driving innovation in rail propulsion

Despite the challenges we all face in this pandemic, the need to innovate and tackle climate change remains constant. Therefore, I welcome the certainty that climate change targets offer our sector during these uncertain times.

They are particularly useful because rail undeniably has an important role to play because it is the most energy and carbon efficient way to move high volumes of people.

It won’t be easy and will require a myriad of varying technologies, behaviour change and private-public partnership, but to put it in its simplest terms, Hitachi Rail can help reduce transport emissions through the introduction of:

Firstly, battery trains. Hitachi Rail has been developing alternative train traction solutions for over 17 years and we successfully introduced one of world’s first battery fleets into Japanese passenger service in 2016.

Building on our experience and expertise, which we honed in Japan, Hitachi Rail has two battery train solutions for both regional and intercity routes. We see battery trains as an area of significant growth across the globe. Just in the UK, there could be around 400 trains using our battery technology by 2030, which would have the combined effect of stopping over 1.7 million tonnes of CO2 emissions during their lifetime.