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Join us on A Better Journey

We’re ensuring every trip is a little bit greener

Welcome onboard our most important journey yet.

We think travelling by train is amazing. Every day, we bring together families and friends, connect cities along the East Coast Mainline and provide vital transport links that enable business and communities to thrive.

Our ambition is to be the most responsible way to travel for generations to come. That’s why we’re working hard to embed sustainability, equality and just practices into everything we do.

Climate change continues to shape our world, and adaptation to this is crucial to our business so we can continue to deliver a high-quality rail service and enable low carbon travel across the UK.

Responsible business at LNER

We are learning to grow our business without increasing our impact. From creating a great place for people to work, to reducing our emissions and waste, and contributing to the communities we serve; our responsible business work is about putting long-term sustainability at the heart of everything we do.

To help us drive positive change, we have created three areas of focus. If something does not serve these wider objectives, then as a business it’s our responsibility to question how we can improve. Better for people, Better for places and Better for planet provides a framework for change.

  • Better for People

    We want to attract, retain and develop truly world-class talent, as we know our people are fundamental to our success. We recognise that fostering a safe, diverse and inclusive culture where everyone feels a sense of belonging is key to enabling them to thrive. We are also committed to making sure every customer has the best possible experience when they travel with us.

  • Better for Places

    There is a special bond between LNER and each of the communities we serve. Whether we’re sourcing products locally, investing in infrastructure, providing meaningful training for young people or funding charitable programmes, we are committed to supporting the prosperity of the incredible places on our route.

  • Better for Planet

    We’re reducing our impact on the environment and driving urgent action towards net zero carbon emissions by 2045. We’re committed to protecting our natural resources with industry-leading initiatives to minimise waste, increase circular systems and make every aspect of our business as efficient as possible.

Responsible Business Report 2023 - 2024

Every year we publish a Responsible Business Report with the results of our ongoing commitments to do things better for our people, our places and our planet.

Find out how we’ve been putting sustainability at the heart of our business – reducing our emissions and waste, contributing to the communities we serve and creating a great place to work for our people in the latest edition.

View the report
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Giving back to the communities we serve

Our Customer and Community Investment Fund (CCIF) works to support charities and causes that do amazing work along our route. It provides vital funding for small and medium sized projects that deliver positive impact to issues that are important to us. These include; mental health, education and employability skills amongst marginalised groups, diversity and inclusion, and environmental sustainability.

Find out about our CCIF projects

Together for Pride

Inclusion is a priority here at LNER for us that means creating a culture where everyone feels able to be their authentic selves and their uniqueness is accepted and celebrated. We also love making our trains stand out from the crowd which is why, to celebrate Pride in 2023, we unveiled a colourful new liveried Azuma called 'Together'. As it runs along the breadth of our route, it's a physical symbol of solidarity and allyship with our LGBTQIA+ colleagues, customers, and communities.

Pride all year round

The ‘Our Planet’ Train

2024 saw the launch of the progressive ‘Our Planet’ train along our East Coast Mainline route. It’s the first UK train with livery applied using a partially bio-based material. Introduced on World Car Free Day it highlights our dedication to sustainable travel.

Calculate my carbon footprint for train, plane and car travel

On an average journey our Azuma trains produce 15 less carbon emissions than flying and 7 times less than driving. Our Carbon Calculator tool helps you understand your impact when travelling with us vs taking the car or a plane.

All you have to do is enter your start and destination details or simply tell us how many miles you may want to go. We’ll then show you the environmental impact for plane, car or train.

The calculations are based on:

  • Car: emissions from an average car (unknown fuel) of 0.339 kgCO2e/mile, including full well-to-tank emissions. Average car occupancy of 1.5 (based on the DfT National Travel Survey), giving emissions per passenger mile of 0.224 kgCO2e/passenger.mile

  • Train: average emissions from the LNER fleet in 2023/24 of 0.0325 kgCO2e/passenger.mile, including full well-to-tank emissions

  • Plane: average emissions from a domestic flight, including radiative forcing, of 0.493 kgCO2e/passenger.mile, including full well-to-tank emissions

Car and plane conversion factors are taken from https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/greenhouse-gas-reporting-conversion-factors-2024 . The train conversion factor is taken from LNER’s 2023/24 greenhouse gas emissions. Comparisons will only be valid for journeys on the LNER route.

Our reports and policies

All of our policies and commitments are available for public viewing.

View all our policies

Accessibility

LNER is committed to providing clear and accurate information that everyone can access and understand.

Accessible versions of the information found on this webpage can be obtained on request via our Customer Service Centre either by email customers@lner.co.uk or call 0345 7225333 between 08:00 and 22:00 Monday to Sunday.

We keep a record of all the energy – electricity and diesel – used to power our fleet throughout the year, which we can use to calculate the associated carbon emissions. When calculating our emissions, we include both our direct emissions from diesel and electricity use (known as ‘scope 1’ and ‘scope 2’ emissions) and the indirect emissions associated with fuel production and distribution, such as emissions from the oil refinery or transmission losses for electricity (known as ‘scope 3’ emissions). We then divide our total emissions by the total distance travelled by our passengers to calculate an emissions per passenger kilometre. Data is from our emissions in the financial year 2023-24.

To compare this to flights, we use data published by the government Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, 2024. This data provides an average emissions per passenger km for different types of flight. We use the figures for a domestic flight. To make this comparable to our figures for rail, we also include the ‘scope 3’ well-to-tank emissions associated with travel by plane.

To compare to road, we use the same government dataset. This provides the carbon emissions per km for an average car of unknown fuel. As with flights, we also add in the ‘scope 3’ well-to-tank emissions. To account for the fact that there may be multiple people travelling in a car, we then divide this by the average car occupancy rates published by the Department for Transport in their National Travel Survey. This gives us an average emissions per passenger km for car travel.