The transport sector is responsible for over one-third of France’s greenhouse gas emissions, making it the country’s biggest polluter. To meet the demands of the green transition, the sector must shift more toward rail, which generates only a fraction of those emissions.

And to make that happen, two major steps are needed.

First, we need to adapt to climate change to protect both our open-air infrastructure and the employees who maintain it, to keep passengers comfortable, and to continue offering safe, comfortable, and reliable service. Each SNCF Group company has crafted an action plan to address specific risks and vulnerabilities, such as soil subsidence, upheaval, flooding, and drought. Water is vital to operating a rail system, so we monitor use closely. And we’ve pledged to cut water consumption by 25% at our 100 most water-intensive sites by 2035.

Second, we need to expand accessibility by making trains and stations easier to use for cyclists and people with disabilities, and by introducing new mobility offerings for everyone. Our 24 metropolitan regional express service (SERM) projects are part of this effort. In rural areas, we’re investing in affordable, low-carbon solutions like light rail (Draisy, TELLi) and road-rail transport (FLEXY), which are especially well suited to lightly travelled routes.

SNCF is already France’s top recruiter—we hired 18,500 people on permanent contracts in 2024 in 150 professions that support environmental protection and social equity. But our impact goes beyond recruitment. 
We focus on 2 areas: helping young people and those at risk find their place in the working world, and making mobility safe, inclusive and accessible to all. We cultivate job-readiness by inviting our employees to participate in skills-sharing programmes, and the SNCF Foundation works with non-profit partners to help young people launch projects that will spur the green transition. Since 2021, we’ve backed over 1,000 such projects throughout France and signed multi-year partnerships in every region of the country.

We also help at-risk jobseekers get on their feet through programmes that create new businesses, provide back-to-work opportunities, and offer same-day pay under the French government’s TAPAJ scheme. We support mediation services, employer-sponsored volunteering, and educational outreach. In 2024, we trained 190,000 people in mobility-related issues, including 110,000 students.

We are working to fight resource depletion and reduce the impact of materials production. One way we do this is by recovering materials and reusing materials at the end of their life cycle, including components from rolling stock.

Our ambition? Reuse or recycle parts from 12,000 wagons and locomotives between 2018 and 2030. So far, it’s working: each year we recover 55,000 tonnes of material—steel, copper and more—representing 95% of materials by volume. We reuse or recycle 100% of our rails, and more than 20% of the ballast from our tracks, with the rest recycled as base layers in road construction, for example. We are also behind a 100% French initiative to recycle our workwear, creating 1,500 jobs over the long term and helping to avoid 140,000 tonnes of CO₂ emissions. SNCF Group is also expanding the lifespan of our equipment through proactive maintenance and repair. Every year, we restore 500,000 pieces of equipment. Our rail recycling centre in Beaune collects, identifies and refurbishes parts for reuse, storing them in a nationwide inventory, and supplies used components to our “circular economy lab” for the rail system.