BNSF Railway

John Lovenburg is an environmental and sustainability leader who drives climate action, advanced energy innovation and remediation solutions across complex industrial systems. He blends technical depth with practical strategy to reduce emissions, strengthen operational resilience and advance sustainable development, consistently elevating environmental performance across large-scale freight operations.

Early Career Foundations: Mentorship and Innovation Inspired Leadership

A “tap on the shoulder” from a regional staffing leader was a pivotal early moment. She told me she kept landing on my name as she was thinking about future leader candidates. Despite only having 7 years of experience, she wanted me to lead a group of 20 technical staff in Southern California. She became a great mentor, giving me confidence, building my leadership skills and teaching me about sustainable solutions.

The other aspect of my consulting experience was leading challenging sustainability projects and programs that created environmental and business win-wins for customers. A developer approached us about an incendiary bomb plant that had been idle for over 50 years. It was a high-risk project that nobody else would tackle that we cleared using innovative remote assessment technologies, resulting in a new productive industrial development project at a fraction of the cost.

At BNSF, our teams made early progress in rapidly reducing remediation liabilities through proactive and innovative remediation approaches. That success enabled expansion of our department scope to include sustainability – first permitting & sustainable development, then renewable energy & energy efficiency, followed by advanced energy innovation and support for sustainable business market growth.

Integrating Sustainability Measures: Carbon Reduction and Circular Initiatives

Let me start with decarbonization. The railroad is feeling, adapting to and mitigating the effects of climate change on operations, especially wildfires over broader geographies and expanding seasons. Also, roughly a third of our customers have carbon targets that include supply chain carbon, so our carbon reduction efforts contribute to their carbon reductions. And we have a carbon target that we’ll achieve through fuel efficiency measures and biofuels. We’re at 18 percent reduction through the end of 2024 – making solid progress towards our 30 percent reduction target by 2030.

BNSF examples of deploying circular economy principles are our oil recycling efforts where our waste oils are upcycled for reuse. And we remanufacture locomotives every 10 years, creating more fuel efficient and cleaner locomotives; contrast that with the trucking industry, where tractors get crushed and melted at end of life after 12 to 15 years, increasing carbon emissions.

We use biofuels to cut our carbon emissions and moving the biofuels supply chain is an important and growing rail market, as they leverage Federal and State subsidies to economically compete with traditional crude oil-based fuels.

BNSF has a Sustainable Freight Leadership Counsel that I moderate. It’s roughly a dozen of our top customers across industries. We see where carbon policies and circularity repeatedly come together in sustainable business markets. One great example is the steel market, where scrap steel is used as feedstock and renewable energy-powered electric arc furnaces reduce carbon of sheet metal for the auto industry, helping them meet their supply chain carbon targets.

Pressing Freight Challenges: Biofuels Face Policy Uncertainty

Biofuels, which can be made by upcycling used cooking oil and tallow, are a big sustainable freight opportunity, but pose major policy and economic challenges. We use biofuels to cut our carbon emissions and moving the biofuels supply chain is an important and growing rail market, as they leverage Federal and State subsidies to economically compete with traditional crude oil-based fuels.

But there is substantial risk given the uncertainty of policy support that can increase cost premiums that hurt competitiveness against other transportation modes. We are navigating these risks by advocating for biofuel policies and growing business with customers who see the benefit of low carbon rail transport.

Sustainable Transportation Outlook: Biofuels Batteries and Electrification

BNSF has been a leader in railyard innovation, from piloting and then scaling wide-span electric cranes, hybrid gantry cranes automated gate systems, drone-based container monitoring and battery-electric yard trucks. Early development of these projects is based in geographies where we can partner with air agencies on R&D projects.

For locomotives, biofuels and hybrid locomotives are the most promising technologies over the next decade. BNSF is piloting blends of biodiesel and renewable diesel with the manufacturers. We plan to significantly increase the volumes we use in our locomotives in the next 5 years.

Progress Rail is currently piloting a Tier 4 (the cleanest locomotive) hybrid locomotive on a test track. The battery pack size is the equivalent to more than 10 electric cars. A winning economic value proposition will be when the cost of the batteries is offset by the fuel savings from improved efficiency. Two other key features of hybrids are the ability to increase horsepower by stacking engine and battery power, as well as the ability to run only on batteries at yards in zero emissions mode.

Environmental Leadership Essentials: Frameworks Systems Thinking and Mentorship

Build your knowledge of sustainability frameworks and practice using them for building sustainable value propositions and solutions. Key skills are long-term and systems-thinking, natural capital, circularity, sustainable development, advanced energy innovation and sustainable markets.

Build your own personal Board of Directors for your career. Early in your career, accept supervisor mentoring. Mid-career, build out your Board by seeking out leaders who are willing to provide targeted coaching. Late career, be open to being a mentor for aspiring sustainability professionals.