Norfolk Southern: Making a Commitment to Corporate Sustainability

I had the pleasure of speaking with Norfolk Southern’s corporate sustainability officer, Blair Wimbush, just now.  One of our interns who documents role models in corporate sustainability had done a nice piece on Norfolk Southern, a large freight railway operating in 22 states here in the U.S., and I was impressed with a great number of the company’s initiatives focused on efficiency, reduction of carbon footprint, and assumption of great levels of responsibility for its environmental impact generally.

In addition to simple corporate citizenship; there is business at stake here as well; some of Norfolk Southern’s sustainability initiatives, e.g., its planting 6 million trees in the Mississippi River delta, generating an enormous flow of carbon credits for the company.  Moreover, we have the classic case in which certain gains in efficiency actually make a positive impact on the bottom line.

I was especially interested in the “999” Program, a battery-powered locomotive currently under development that will be used for moving individual cars around within a yard and for short hauls.  The beauty of this concept is that it represents the potential to create a micro-grid, i.e., charging the locomotive’s battery packs with a large solar array or a wind farm.  Wimbush isn’t making any promises or commitments in this area, but he was quick to point out that this is a logical next step, which is certainly true; I’d love to see it happen.

We closed with a nostalgic look at the caboose – an icon of yesteryear, never to re-appear, a victim of technologic progress, e.g., electronic notification from the rear of the train to the front that the last car has cleared a crossing.