The Green Miles nine question decarbonisation challenge – Dr Alexander Burrows

Alex has held senior strategic roles at West Midlands Trains, the University of Birmingham, Alstom, Atkins, and the West Midlands Transport Authority in the UK. He completed his PhD in the field of railway engineering innovation at the University of Birmingham and continues his research in this field, with a particular interest in decarbonisation. Alex is a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology and the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport.

Vanguard’s technology, the Hydroshunter, is a hydrogen-powered shunting locomotive, and was launched to market in February 2026.

Right, let’s get to it…

9. What are the biggest common sustainability challenges facing the entire logistics sector in your opinion? 

There are barriers the logistics sector faces that all sectors face. At the moment there is political uncertainty in our world that we aren’t used to in our lifetimes, and a tough economic climate doesn’t help either.

Speaking more specifically, we have ageing infrastructure and assets that are getting older and need more money invested into them; not just to repair them, but to modernise them too. We need new infrastructure because the existing network is congested.

For the sector the challenge is how we get the capacity and reliability into our networks, in a world where sadly sustainability is often viewed as a lower priority.

8. What is the current state of hydrogen in rail freight? 

In an ideal world you’d be able to electrify your whole network and that would be that. But we live in the real world where that isn’t the case, and almost 60% of the network is unelectrified. There are lines that are very unlikely to see electrification simply because they’re in remote areas, where lines are barely utilised, and that creates difficulty in establishing a business case.

What is the hope that the less busy routes have any chance for electrification in the next 20, 30, 50 years? So there’s a clear role for hydrogen [there].

Electrification is the best solution; it provides lots of power, it’s reliable and it’s clean, but it’s expensive to deliver and we aren’t in a place where we’re going to realistically see that happen in any significant volumes in the medium term.

We see a key role for hydrogen in rail freight, providing that ability to decarbonise or bridge gaps between wires to provide that decarbonisation pathway.

7. Do you think the UK’s net zero goals are realistic? 

The net zero goals are critical and they must be achieved. The problem isn’t technology, it’s a question of political will. If there was the political will, if there was certainty of public policy, that would allow for clarity of investment decision-making because the money is there, private capital and public finance.

Technology exists to make significant inroads into those net zero goals, [but] if the government doesn’t create a mandate that says (for example), ‘we want to see heavy goods vehicles decarbonised in 20 years, and this is the road map we expect to do that’, then the investment won’t come from the OEMs.

If you have a 20-year roadmap for delivering decarbonisation technology, it’s achievable. But politicians have got to take firm decisions and demonstrably stick to them. The problem is that they don’t.

6. What are the specific challenges that rail freight faces? 

Our railway system is geared towards passenger services, not freight, and there’s a limited amount of capacity. The government also has to invest with taxpayer money, and decided that the passenger flows are the priority.

As a result, rail freight is absolutely squeezed to the margins and it’s not satisfactory. When you look at other countries, like the Balkans in southeast Europe, rail freight is the dominant user. It’s about a 30-70 split in favour of rail freight. Unfortunately [in the UK], you don’t have the dominance of rail in the political agenda for transport in the same way.

Transport is a lower priority compared to home economic policy, social policy, foreign policy, and so on.

5. What are the best examples of positive breakthroughs you have seen in the last decade? 

I feel very positive watching the uptake of battery electric cars, which has been phenomenal. The number of electric vehicles on the road has exponentially increased in the last three years, which is fantastic to see. Again it shows that this is about certainty and momentum and people buy electric cars when the policy is there to incentivise it.

That can be applied to wider logistics as well. From the perspective of railway operators, they will pay for the technology. There’s a recognition in the market that diesel is a dying technology and it would be preferable to put the sword in now and accept [that] it has to be gone in 15 years, and then people can write their investment plans accordingly. It’s the uncertainty that causes cost.

Aviation and maritime are seeing shifts; not long ago I would have struggled to imagine these sectors taking big steps away from their traditional technologies, because they need reliability. I feel very positive that at a macro level, things are changing. It’s just at the micro level, where people like us need more of these breakthroughs to be supported so we can take our practical solutions to market and get value from the investment we put in to deliver it.

4. Who is an inspirational figure in logistics? 

Maggie Simpson, Director General of the Rail Freight Group. She has been an absolute force of nature for rail freight and particularly in the areas around policy uncertainty and the government needing to send clear signals.

She’s a first-class advocate and role model for rail freight and for the logistics sector more broadly in terms of making politicians and policymakers understand that you cannot ignore something so fundamental to daily life as freight by rail.

3. With the growing emphasis on sustainability, do you see rail freight competing with road and air transport? 

I want to see transport decarbonised, that’s my mission. So I don’t see it as a competition. Road, aviation and maritime are all trying to decarbonise with similar challenges and pathways to solving those challenges.

I’m really interested in using our technology to decarbonise port and airport operations: not the ships and planes themselves, but all of the equipment and machinery that supports the operations at the port or airport, that moves freight, moves luggage, moves people around – that could all be decarbonised.

To my mind there are huge opportunities for us all to be looking at that from an integrated perspective of how we can spend less and get more by working together. Finding those collaborative projects that would allow all of those modes to work together or get complementary solutions in the same place.

2. How do logistics companies deal with ‘first mover hesitancy’? 

This is a real problem and goes back to my point about policy uncertainty. If there isn’t certainty of public policy, it’s much harder to develop a strong, coherent investment case.

Making that investment case so your finance director, investor or whoever has a clear, compelling argument for investing in the technology application with the certainty of knowing they’re going to get a return because it’ll become an inevitability.

As soon as it’s an inevitability, first mover hesitancy becomes first mover opportunity in a huge way; it flips it on its head.

For logistics companies reading this, I would say the direction of travel is very clear. You may think the UK is either moving too fast or moving too slowly, but if you look globally you can see very clearly that public and private capital is supporting the decarbonisation technology being implemented at ports and airports.

1. You are Prime Minister for the day – you can change/implement one thing – what is it? 

A national transport strategy. You have to look at the transport network and infrastructure as a whole system and then work from there [at] all of the different components. You can’t plan them separately, you have to plan it together.

If we do that, we can see the opportunity for rail freight to play a much bigger role.