In March 2020, shortly before the current Coronavirus crisis, the European Commission announced that 2021 would be the “Year of Rail”, in recognition of its potential to be a driving contributor to this mandate’s commitment to achieving its hallmark objective: the EU Green Deal. Europe now finds itself dealing with the ramifications of a widespread public health emergency and its associated economic effects, and rail will be part of the Union’s future recovery and allow it to continue on track towards carbon neutrality. To do so, it is essential that decision-makers at the EU and National levels remain committed to implementing smart, sustainable rail solutions and investing in the development of green technologies that enable them.
The success of any solution relies on its popularity and mobility options are no exception. In recent years, society and individual customers have become increasingly aware of the growing threat of climate change and now seek environmentally friendly solutions. The railway sector needs to continue to prioritise offerings that cater seamlessly to multimodal end-user needs. Providing passengers and freight end-users with more expansive rail mobility services and fostering widespread adoption of digital solutions will be key to creating a future sustainable transport paradigm. The fact that these preconditions must be enacted to create a greener network was given voice by European Commissioner for Transport Adina-Ioana Vălean at the 2020 European Rail Award when she explained that “decarbonizing transport will depend strongly on rail increasing its market share”.
To encourage customers to shift to rail, it is important that rail gives them the tools to tailor it to their needs. Fortunately, our sector is already easily accessible to communities across the EU. Its physical presence in towns and cities positions it as the most natural backbone of a future green mobility paradigm, as it already interacts with other modes of transport offering multimodal services. This infrastructure makes rail most capable of contributing to a sustainable multimodal network by improving ease of travel and implementing systems that facilitate connections. Placing rail as a connective element in the mobility chain will require the implementation of more digital solutions like intuitive ticketing systems and information services across systems. Investing in these technologies allows existing networks to becoming driving forces in the EU’s green transformation.
For the European Rail Supply Industry, continued development of more sustainable and efficient products that keeps rail competitive while contributing to EU Green Deal goals is essential. UNIFE’s Key Enablers, specific research topics deemed potentially most impactful, provide us with areas of focus that will optimise our contribution to this green mobility transformation. Amongst others, these initiatives include digitalisation, new propulsion systems, big data and more. These tools will make rail cleaner and more efficient while increasing capacity and reliability of rail transport. These goals can be achieved through the deployment of existing technologies, such as ERTMS, alongside future technologies delivered by future R&I programmes, like 5G, FRMCS, Digital Twins, and AI. The extension of the Shift2Rail Joint Undertaking (S2R JU) as Shift2Rail2 is essential to fostering and coordinating these efforts going forward as the European Union prepares for a post-COVID world.
The EU Green Deal is an ambitious project that requires a whole-of-society approach to complete. It will only be accomplished with adequate contributions from both the private and public sector, at both the EU and National levels. Strong allocations are needed for HorizonEurope – with sufficient budget for the anticipated extension of S2R JU – as well as the Connecting Europe Facility and Cohesion Fund, to generate and implement sustainable rail technologies and projects that will spur employment following this unprecedented outbreak.
COVID-19 has disrupted public life in ways not seen for decades. As many look forward to a return to their normal routine, the rail sector has an opportunity to anticipate its role as a driver of a cleaner, new mobility paradigm. By partnering the private and public sectors, the European Rail Supply Industry can develop the technologies that will allow us to decarbonize transport and reach carbon neutrality by 2050. Together, the European Union and its rail sector can exit this crisis on a competitive footing while addressing climate change.
Swedish State Railways (SJ) has for a long time highlighted the minimal climate footprint of rail compared to air travel. More recently, the “flight-shame” movement has emerged as an opportunity to take this one step further. The concept started to gain traction in social media in Sweden in 2017, about a year before climate change activist Greta Thunberg initiated her school strike, which developed into the world-wide Fridays For Future demonstrations. The basic idea behind “flight shaming” was that measures aimed at reducing air travel, such as increased fees for airlines, were insufficient. Targeting the social capital of the travellers would have a greater effect.
Travelling by train in Sweden has increased significantly in recent years. Since the mid 1990s, train passenger kilometres have increased by more than 200 per cent. Just between 2017 and 2019 the increase was another 10.4 per cent. In contrast, domestic air travel seems to have peaked in 2017, with a combined loss of almost 1 million passengers in 2018 and 2019, or -12.5 per cent. Consequently, rail has also improved its market share. These trends continued in January 2020, before the coronavirus crisis hit the transportation industry.
SJ regularly performs on-board surveys asking our customers about their reasons for choosing the train. Among 14 different alternatives, the environmental aspect is now – for the very first time – the top stated reason, mentioned by 34 percent of passengers.
During the past years, SJ has been communicating ”carbon savings” to private as well as business customers, comparing train emissions with corresponding numbers from cars and airplanes. In 2019 SJ decided to further explore the communication opportunities provided by more environmentally conscious customers and the increased interest in travelling by train.
We picked our most important line – Stockholm–Gothenburg – and formed a campaign around a very basic question: “How many journeys by train from Stockholm to Gothenburg can you take before the CO2 emissions equal those of a single flight?”. The answer, “40,000 journeys”, was conveyed in TV commercials, printed media and posters at railway stations. To calculate this number we used the standard methodology for calculation and declaration of energy consumption and CO2 emissions of transport services (EN 16258) and airplane emission data from Scandinavian Airlines1. The fact that SJ is able to purchase 100% renewable electricity, mostly from hydro power, did of course contribute significantly.
Going forward, we now also see a renewed interest in international train journeys. A related Facebook community has attracted more than 113,000 members and it has become a thing to “train boast” – bragging about going on vacation by train. SJ is working to make it easier to book international train journeys. Such journeys usually require some form of collaboration with other train operators, but also with airlines (e.g. for return journeys). Therefore, there are opportunities ahead, not only for rail.
1 SAS have later revised their figures, affecting the calculation of journeys to be reduced to 27,000.
Photo by Tranmautritam from Pexels
When Ursula von der Leyen addressed the European Parliament in July 2019 asking for a vote of confidence in her appointment as President of the incoming European Commission, her focus on sustainability did not come as a surprise.
Global warming is ‘the’ hot topic in all international forums and its importance is rising. What makes it a singular issue is the way it has stepped out of institutional rooms to massively enter the public debate of citizens around the globe. It is a fact that no other public policy issue is being discussed as much as the tools that national and continental governments should put in place to stop temperatures rising.
What was unique in von der Leyen’s speech was its level of ambition: ‘I want Europe to be the first climate-neutral continent’, she said.
It is true that the recently published proposal for a Climate Law received bad comments from many environmental activists since it provides for climate neutrality to be reached by 2050 only, proposing no stringent mid-way targets. Nevertheless, it is a fact that the Union has made climate change its top priority like no other political body anywhere else. On CER’s side, as a prominent participant in all debates that shape European climate policies, we will do our best to support and realise the ambitions of the Union executive branch.
Active in Brussels since 1988, CER is proud to defend the rail sector on the grounds of its sustainability credentials, which are today making railways a fundamental part of the solution.
In the context of the European Green Deal (EGD), the Commission Directorate-General for Mobility will soon put forward a Strategy on Smart and Sustainable Mobility: we look forward to seeing reflected there a firm stand in favour of redressing all those regulatory imbalances that currently make railways less attractive vis à vis other transport modes.
Other policy initiatives are announced, which we hope will be strong enough to make European mobility move in the right direction: we will see a revised TEN-T Regulation and combined transport Directive, initiatives aimed at increasing rail infrastructure capacity, a revision of the Energy Taxation Directive.
As for gathering more resources for sustainable investments, we also hope that the EGD Investment Plan will bring positive effects. On the one side, we need a quick agreement between the Member States on the 2021-2027 Multiannual Financial Framework to secure necessary resources for key budgetary lines like the Connecting Europe Facility or pivotal R&I initiatives like Shift2Rail. On the other side, we hope that additional resources can be re-oriented through appropriate financing: the European Investment Bank will play a key role (and it will soon revise its transport lending policy!) and the Sustainable Finance Action Plan must find ways to have more binding consequences on institutional investors (a new version of it will be made public next autumn).
Much is still to be seen of course, but in the meantime the CER Management Committee met with Commission First Vice-President Frans Timmermans in February to underscore railways’ commitment to upgrade their technology and the quality of their services. The Commission’s political will is clear and confirmed; if we manage to get the European Parliament and national governments onboard as well, I see a bright green future ahead for Europe!