"It’s my ambition to contribute towards achieving the UK 2050 net zero goal."
How Avanti West Coast’s Fatin Abdalla is playing her part in the battle against Climate Change.
12 November, 2021
Fatin Abdalla has two positions at Avanti West Coast. Not only is she an onboard Customer Service Assistant, but she also works in our Sustainability Team as a Carbon Reporting Executive. Here she talks about her role and the effect of climate change.
Throughout my studies and now at Avanti West Coast, I have developed a real passion for the environment.
This interest began at university after graduating in Mechanical Engineering and then achieving a Masters’ degree in Renewable Energy and Environmental modelling. This has been furthered even more while studying for my PhD in Renewable Energy working on solar, heat pumps and energy storage systems. As a student, I also attended the Paris Climate Agreement conference in December 2015.
Climate change is important because of its impact on human health as well as placing communities across the world at risk of wildfires, droughts, and floods.
“Rail is so important as it presents a solution right now for people to travel in a more sustainable way.”
At COP26 we’ve seen these issues discussed on a global stage with the goal of trying to solve them. We need to act as fast as possible, so countries must submit emissions reduction targets that will set them on a path to reach net zero by 2050.
It’s my ambition to contribute towards achieving the UK 2050 goal both on a national and global level. At Avanti West Coast, I am playing my part in the Responsible Business Team by calculating the company’s indirect emissions and setting science-based emissions reduction targets.
Rail is so important as it presents a solution right now for people to travel in a more sustainable way. Avanti West Coast is not resting on that fact and was one of the first train operating companies to commit to set Science-based emissions reduction targets to reduce our emissions to be net zero.
These targets ensure we align our carbon reduction with the levels that the science say is required to limit global temperature to 1.5 degrees, which would prevent the most catastrophic impacts of climate change.
Our carbon footprint is more than just the energy we use in our trains and at our stations. Energy is used when manufacturing any material be it paper, metal or plastic. It is used to extract the raw material, transport it and then process it.
More energy is utilised by creating new products from that material, transporting those items and then finally disposing of them when no longer needed. This means that anything we buy in has a carbon footprint. Our ambition is to support our supply chains to understand their own carbon impact and set science-based carbon reduction targets so we can all work together to reach our net zero goal.
If we all start to understand and focus on the impact that each of our decisions make on our environment, then together we can make the right decisions to have a positive influence on our future.
Watch Fatin finding out more about rail and its sustainable benefits here:
Images
Main: Fatin at Glasgow Central Station
Fatin tries out the Rail Delivery Group's Rail Simulator at Glasgow Central