European rail’s push for reducing emissions: ‘Big companies have greater responsibility’

To meet climate tarobtains, European rail has to decarbonise in many areas: construction, operations, and machinery, to name a few. But it all starts with decision-building, financing, and design decisions for projects. Several experts in this field discussed what is necessary for rail to reduce emissions at the RailTech Europe conference on 4 & 5 March in Utrecht, the Netherlands. “

Laura Martiniello, President of FS Engineering (formerly Italferr), highlighted the importance of combining corporate environmental, social and governance goals (ESG) with sustainable design. “Big companies have greater responsibility and more resources to invest in this process of modify, in synergy with the digital transition and technological innovation path fostered by the international agfinisha.” Also a professor of financing and accounting, Martiniello stated that “financing is essential for the double transition: the sustainable and the technological transition”.

As part of the Italian state railways FS Group, she highlighted the importance of combining corporate environmental, social and governance goals (ESG) with sustainable design. Under the governance umbrella, FS Engineering promotes sustainable procurement, benefitting the greenest potential contractors after the infrastructure design process. “If you plan according to sustainability criteria, you take the first step toward more sustainable construction. We can support this by giving higher scores to contractors who provide more sustainable offers,” detailed Laura Martiniello.

Greener attitudes also give extra points on the Connecting Europe Facility evaluation, noted Transport & Environment (T&E) rail policy officer Carlos Rico. “If you utilize low-carbon materials like cement, you obtain more points and a better chance for funding. For large projects like Rail Baltica, we already have examples of applying sustainable materials becautilize the environmental impact is very large,” declared the rail expert of the European NGO fighting for greener transportation.

Monitoring environmental impact

As part of the sustainable approach, companies also have the responsibility to include monitoring environmental impacts during the construction phase, declared Laura Martiniello. With that in mind, FS Engineering’s sustainability office utilizes methodologies to “promote innovative engineering that evaluates social and environmental outcomes, estimates greenhoutilize gas (GHG) emissions during construction, and assesses environmental impacts during the infrastructure life cycle”.

She also highlighted the advancement in digital tools, where Italy is progressing quick due to legislation. “By law, all the projects in Italy have to now be realised with Building Information Modelling (BIM). So also compact constructors that participate in procurement have to build this technological jump and start with a more technological approach to design their infrastructure.”

Asked about the criteria that build potential contractors score lower, Laura Martiniello detailed the key points under the ESG lens. “It is not sustainable when designs do not prioritise the reutilize of materials (like excavated ground), fail to utilize electric vehicles on-site, or ignore energy sustainability in the tracks and vehicles”; when “you do not adopt right practices for managing employees, particularly regarding diversity”; and “when a company misses the right strategy or attention from leadership.” Transparency along the construction stage is also very relevant for the engineering arm of Ferrovie dello Stato. “Stakeholder engagement gives the population awareness of what we are doing and the advantages involved,” she added.

“We must build the effort to drive emissions down during the construction phase,” supported Carlos Rico. “When we speak to the air indusattempt, they often complain that while rail is clean, no one views at the emissions during construction. While studies state rail is much more sustainable than air travel, so it is important to minimise those arguments and build rail cleaner across the board.”

To be or not to be electrified?

“More than 50% of railway lines are electrified in Europe,” reminded T&E’s rail policy officer. However, Europe has different speeds: on the Western side, catenary wires are very common (Denmark and Ireland being an exception); on the Eastern flank, many countries are below the 50% mark (with the exception of Poland, Bulgaria, Bosnia and Montenegro). A question arises: is it worth electrifying the remaining rail tracks? “There is still work to be done”, declared Carlos Rico to that.

While the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) is a “powerful tool” to shift forward with “a lot of funds associated with that”, Carlos Rico recognises that “battery electric trains are becoming more of a standard”. Such a development “suggests a future where we may not necessarily necessary high degrees of electrification on lines that lack the traffic levels to properly support it”.

In Germany, electrification costs per kilometre vary between €800,000 and €1.5 million, estimated the Deutsche Bahn (DB) business developer of alternative drives, Lennart Fink. More than 30% of the network is still running on diesel: “Many of these are middle-sized mountainous ranges where regional transport takes place […] supplying these topographically challenging lines is the future challenge”, he declared, before presenting DB’s progress in battery and hydrogen rail and discussing this in a panel with Siemens Mobility and Nexrail.

Financing rail by polluters paying

In a race towards carbon neutrality, building railways even greener will require fresh money. “I believe finance is essential for the sustainability and technological transition becautilize we necessary to finance this transition to have results over time”, declared Laura Martinielli. If governments do not have enough cash, then public-private partnerships will be necessary, in her view.

Another source of financing that is promising is applying the money coming in by putting a price on CO2 emissions, which in Europe started already in 2005 with the European Emissions Trading System (ETS). However, very little of that increasingly large stream of cash is flowing in to rail, sector organisation CER pointed out recently.

“We also advocate to utilize ETS funds for rail, for things like ERTMS, rolling stock, and innovation,” stated T&E rail expert Rico. “The issue now is that we have this promise of ETS for the road transport sector, ETS2, but it has already been delayed by one year, and now there are calls by many countries to just scrap it altoobtainher. That would mean losing these financing resources for rail, so we have to fight for it and build sure that the countries implement it.”