Business grew, emissions held: inside a private rail contractor's first ESG report

Most conversations about corporate decarbonisation begin and end with a single number: total emissions, up or down. It is the figure investors screen for and the one regulators write into rules. But for a growing industrial business, total emissions can be a blunt instrument, and the more revealing story often sits in the relationship between what a company emits and what it does. Loram's first ESG report, published in 2026, is a compact case study in exactly that tension. The privately held rail infrastructure company reports that its operations emitted roughly 76,000 metric tons of CO2e in both 2023 and 2024, essentially flat, while the amount of track it serviced rose by about 8 percent and its carbon intensity fell by a similar margin. In the report's own plain words, the business grew while emissions fell.

This article takes that single claim and pulls it apart. It looks at how Loram measures intensity, what the regional numbers say, why the headline figure hides very different stories in North America, Australia, Brazil and the United Kingdom, and what the report does not yet say. Every figure below is attributed to Loram's 2026 ESG Report, which is the company's first.

Who Loram is, and why its first report matters

Loram describes itself as a global rail infrastructure company that designs, builds, operates and maintains the systems that keep rail networks running. Its work centres on extending the life of rail, preventing failures and improving network performance. The company is privately held and owned by Coril Holdings, and its parent traces its roots to 1898, when it was building railway grade on the Canadian Pacific Railroad. Headquarters moved to Minnesota in 1954, and today the business is based in Hamel, Minnesota. It operates seven offices across the United States, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Finland, India and Australia, has equipment working in 27 countries, and fields around 250 machines. Roughly 1,700 people work for it worldwide, about 1,100 of them in the United States.

None of that would normally put Loram in front of a sustainability audience. Privately held industrial contractors are not obliged to publish emissions inventories, and most do not. What makes the 2026 report notable is that Loram chose to. The document states that the company voluntarily aligns with public company governance standards, with a nine-member board that has a majority of independent, non-executive directors, separate chair and chief executive roles, an external financial audit and annual board evaluations. The report also notes ISO 9001, 14001 and 45001 certifications covering quality, environmental management and occupational health and safety. In other words, the emissions disclosure arrives inside a governance framework that deliberately mimics a listed company's.

How the footprint was measured

The emissions inventory follows the GHG Protocol Corporate Standard, and the report also references the SASB Rail Transportation Standard. The boundary uses the operational control approach and covers all operations in North America, Australia, Brazil, the United Kingdom and India. Scope 1 covers fossil fuels burned in manufacturing operations and company vehicles. Scope 2 covers electricity used in offices and factories. Loram does not report Scope 3 figures. The report says only the United Kingdom entity has a calculated Scope 3 inventory, and it gives no values for it. Track activity in India is classified as Scope 3 because it falls outside the company's operational control, which is why India is excluded from the intensity calculation.

The resulting totals are strikingly stable. In 2023, Scope 1 emissions were 74,867.1 metric tons CO2e and Scope 2 emissions were 1,373.3, for a combined 76,240.3 metric tons. In 2024, Scope 1 was 74,469.5 and Scope 2 was 1,473.8, for a combined 75,943.3. That is a change of less than half of one percent, which is why the report describes the footprint as roughly 76,000 metric tons a year. Scope 1 dominates in both years, accounting for around 98 percent of the total, because the company's footprint is overwhelmingly about fuel burned in machines and vehicles rather than electricity drawn from the grid.

The denominator: track miles serviced

To turn a flat absolute number into a story about efficiency, Loram needs a denominator, and it chooses track miles serviced. The report gives the figures by region. In 2023, the company serviced 286,226 track miles, equivalent to 460,537 kilometres, across the regions inside its boundary. In 2024 that figure rose to 308,479 track miles, or 496,343 kilometres, an increase of about 8 percent.

Dividing the group's emissions by the group's track miles gives a rough sense of the shift. Using the report's own totals, 2023 works out to around 266 kilograms of CO2e per track mile and 2024 to around 246, a fall of about 7.6 percent. That is our own arithmetic on the report's published totals, and it lines up with the report's statement that carbon intensity fell about 8 percent while track miles serviced rose about 8 percent. The regional intensity tables, which the report calculates on the same basis, provide the finer detail and show that the group figure is an average of very different regional experiences.

North America: the footprint that decides the total

North America is where the numbers are decided. The region accounted for 68,467.6 metric tons of CO2e in 2023, or about 90 percent of the group total, and 65,539.1 metric tons in 2024, or about 86 percent. Scope 1 emissions fell from 67,597.2 to 64,577.3 metric tons, while Scope 2 rose slightly from 870.5 to 961.8.

At the same time, North American track miles serviced rose from 216,658 to 226,067, an increase of roughly 4 percent. Absolute emissions in the region fell by roughly 4 percent, and the report calculates intensity falling from 316.0 to 291.4 kilograms per track mile, a decline of 7.78 percent. This is the cleanest version of the headline claim. More track was serviced and fewer tons were emitted. Because the region represents such a large share of the total, it is also the main reason the group's absolute emissions held flat even as other regions grew.

The report does not attribute the North American improvement to a single cause, but it does describe a set of operational levers that bear on it. Between 2020 and 2025, Loram says it retired more than 255 aging vehicles and replaced them with lighter-duty options, including Ford F150s, and moved some crew hauling to vans. The company estimates this fleet modernisation will cut tailpipe emissions by about 550 metric tons of CO2 a year. It has also deployed more than 100 Tier 4 and Stage V engines since 2017, which it says deliver about 85 percent lower particulate matter, about 45 percent lower nitrogen oxides and about 5 percent better fuel efficiency, with savings of up to 45 metric tons of CO2 per engine per year depending on size and duty cycle. These are Loram's own estimates, and the report does not break down how much of the 2024 intensity improvement each one explains.

Australia and Brazil: intensity falls, absolute emissions rise

The most interesting contrast sits in the smaller regions. Australia shows the largest improvement in carbon intensity among the regions with comparable data, which the report puts at a fall from 725.5 to 483.5 kilograms per track mile, or about 33 percent. Brazil follows with a fall from 900.4 to 668.1, about 26 percent. Yet in both countries, absolute emissions went up.

Australia's emissions rose from 5,631.0 to 6,793.5 metric tons of CO2e, an increase of around 21 percent, lifting its share of the group total from 8 to 9 percent. Its track miles serviced, however, jumped from 7,761 to 14,051, an increase of more than 80 percent. Brazil's emissions rose from 1,042.0 to 2,640.2 metric tons, more than doubling and lifting its share from 1 to 3 percent, while its track miles serviced rose from 1,157 to 3,952, more than tripling. In both cases, activity grew far faster than emissions, which is what a falling intensity looks like arithmetically.

This is the pattern that makes intensity metrics both useful and treacherous. A newly scaled-up operation spreads fixed fuel use across more output, so intensity improves quickly even as the absolute footprint grows. Intensity can be a sign of genuine efficiency, but it can also be a sign of scale effects, utilisation changes or a shift in the mix of work. The report does not say which explains the Australian and Brazilian figures, and the data alone cannot settle it. What the numbers do show is that the group's flat total masks absolute growth in two regions that was offset by absolute declines elsewhere, chiefly in North America and the United Kingdom.

The United Kingdom and India

The United Kingdom is the lowest-intensity region by a wide margin. Its emissions fell from 888.0 to 740.9 metric tons of CO2e, a decline of about 17 percent, while track miles serviced rose from 60,649 to 64,410, an increase of roughly 6 percent. Reported intensity dropped from 14.6 to 11.5 kilograms per track mile, about 21 percent. The magnitude is very different from North America's, which hints at a different kind of work, with fewer large diesel-powered machines per mile of track serviced, though the report does not explain the gap.

India is the awkward entry. Its Scope 2 emissions are reported at 211.6 metric tons in 2023 and 229.6 in 2024, and it has no Scope 1 figure. Its track activity is out of scope for the calculation because it is classified as Scope 3, and the intensity values the report lists for India do not follow the same unit pattern as the other regions. Any reader comparing India with the others should treat that line with caution, and the exclusion illustrates a general point about intensity metrics, which is that they are only as comparable as their boundaries.

Diesel and machines: where the carbon actually lives

If the regional split explains where the emissions are, the energy and activity splits explain what they are made of. By energy source, diesel accounted for 68,451.3 metric tons in 2023 and 68,392.9 in 2024, a steady 90 percent of the total. Gasoline contributed 5,942.7 metric tons in 2023 and 5,247.0 in 2024, or 8 and 7 percent. Electricity, which is the Scope 2 component, made up about 2 percent, and natural gas about 1 percent. Biodiesel and ethanol appear for the first time in 2024, at just 0.2 and 10.6 metric tons respectively, which is effectively a rounding error in a 76,000-ton inventory.

By activity, the picture is just as concentrated. Machines were responsible for 63,961.7 metric tons in 2023 and 64,179.4 in 2024, or 84 to 85 percent of the total. Vehicles fell from 10,423.2 to 9,460.6 metric tons, a decline of roughly 9 percent, reflecting the fleet modernisation. Buildings and facilities rose from 1,855.4 to 2,303.3 metric tons, a rise of about 24 percent, though from a very small base, and they remain only about 3 percent of the total.

Read together, these tables make clear where the leverage lies. Vehicle rightsizing has already produced a visible reduction, but vehicles are only about 12 percent of the footprint. The 85 percent that sits in operational machines is where a step change would have to happen, and the report acknowledges this directly, identifying a small number of high-impact assets as the main opportunity for reductions. Absolute machine emissions edged up by about 0.3 percent between 2023 and 2024, even as intensity fell, which suggests the efficiency gain came from doing more work with the same machines, not from changing what powers them.

The technology pipeline

Loram's report points to several technologies that could shift the machine-level numbers, though it is careful not to attach quantified targets to them. Its LM1 rail milling machine uses a hydrogen fuel-cell powertrain with onboard high-pressure storage of about 350 bar, producing zero direct emissions in operation, with water as the only exhaust. The report describes travel speeds of up to 60 kilometres an hour and work speeds of up to 600 metres an hour depending on track conditions, and notes that sourcing renewable hydrogen would further align the machine with ESG goals. The company says it has also added electric, hybrid, fuel-cell and battery-powered rail millers to its fleet, and that it is exploring conversion from diesel to overhead electric power where the infrastructure allows. Lower-carbon fuels such as biodiesel and ethanol are named as opportunities.

The avoided-emissions argument

Loram also makes a second, larger claim that sits alongside its own footprint. The report estimates that rail grinding, one of the company's core services, roughly doubles the life of rail assets, and that this prevents around 1.0 to 1.5 million tons of CO2 a year across the North American Class I network through avoided steel manufacturing. It also cites independent testing showing that friction management can reduce locomotive fuel consumption by about 7 to 8 percent under controlled conditions, which for U.S. Class I railroads could mean roughly 200 to 250 million gallons of fuel saved annually. The report adds an industry research finding that moving freight by rail instead of truck lowers associated greenhouse gas emissions by up to 75 percent.

These figures are an order of magnitude or more larger than Loram's own footprint, and they should be read with the appropriate caution. They are estimates of benefits that accrue to customers and the wider network, not emissions reductions inside Loram's inventory, and the report presents them as such. Avoided-emissions claims are a useful way of describing the value of a service, but they sit outside the GHG Protocol inventory and cannot be netted against the 76,000 tons reported in the tables. The more useful discipline is to hold both numbers at once, the small footprint Loram controls and the large system effect it argues its services enable, without letting either substitute for the other.

What the report does not say

A first report is also defined by its gaps. Loram sets no quantified emissions reduction targets. The report says the company intends to set targets in the future and to pursue consistent year-over-year reductions in carbon intensity, which is a commitment to a direction rather than a destination. There are no Scope 3 figures beyond the note that the United Kingdom has a calculated inventory. The India intensity data are unclear. And there is no attribution analysis separating how much of the 2024 intensity improvement came from efficiency, how much from utilisation and how much from changes in the mix of work.

None of this is unusual for a first-year disclosure, and it would be unfair to measure a debut report against the standard of a mature one. But it does define what a second report would need to show for the intensity story to be convincing. A target would turn a trend into a commitment. A longer time series would test whether 2024 was a signal or a one-year blip. And evidence of machines shifting away from diesel would show whether absolute emissions can eventually fall as well, not just intensity.

Why it matters

Privately held firms rarely have to publish emissions at all. Loram's first report shows what a non-listed industrial can do: SASB-aligned, GHG Protocol-based, with regional detail. For SMEs in the rail supply chain, it's a template and a signal that Class I customers will ask for the same data.

The takeaway

Loram's 2026 ESG report makes a deceptively simple claim and, to its credit, supplies the data to test it. Absolute emissions of around 76,000 metric tons CO2e held steady between 2023 and 2024. Track miles serviced rose about 8 percent. Intensity fell about 8 percent. Underneath that tidy sentence lies a messier picture, with North America cutting absolute emissions while serving more track, Australia and Brazil scaling rapidly with falling intensity but rising totals, the United Kingdom improving from a low base, and India sitting awkwardly outside the boundary.

The deeper lesson is about the limits of any single metric. Intensity tells you whether a business is getting more efficient at its work, and absolute emissions tell you what the atmosphere receives. A company can be improving on one while standing still on the other, and a first report like this one is most useful when it lets readers see both. With 90 percent of the footprint in diesel and 85 percent in machines, the real work of decarbonising Loram still lies ahead, and the next report will show whether the company moves from describing that work to measuring it.