KPMG: Measuring True Value of railways
Since 2014, Dutch Railway operator ‘NS’ has calculated the positive and negative impacts of its operations on society in monetary terms and has published the results in their annual report.
NS started working with KPMG on True Value to get a better understanding of their societal impact, and to publicly contribute to in the development of impact assessments.
Over the past years, the scope and use of the True Value assessments of NS have developed to applications of True Value in decision making and in-depth analysis on their most significant topics, such as travel time, mobility, safety and the environment.
- No, but aligns with the Protocol’s framework
- Biodiversity & Ecosystem Services
- Climate & Air Emissions
- Noise & Light Disturbances
- Waste Management
- Water
- Corporate
- Project
- Monetary
- Value to business
- Value to society
- EUROPE
- Direct operations
- Downstream
- Upstream
- Services
Key findings
The analysis of its natural capital has convinced NS to switch to 100% wind energy to power its trains, to reduce the societal impact of the electricity used.
This reduced NS’ environmental impact significantly (42%) by €55 million.
However, the most material topics for NS are travel time and mobility.
Therefore, NS has also focused on reducing the negative impact caused by delays, transfers and the time spent to get to and from the railway station.
For example, NS invested in better bike storage facilities and refurbished bikes to make the door-to-door journey faster and easier.
The company also uses social and natural capital assessments for operational decisions, such as a social impact analysis for three alternatives of future rail transport in, to and from the province Zealand.