Two capital expenditure categories are eligible:

• Purchases of trainsets that run on high-speed lines, from fleet upgrades to replacement of rolling stock with the latest models, including TGV M and TGV Euroduplex U3FC.
• Spending on maintenance and renovation of equipment  operating on high-speed lines. These outlays include “mid-life overhauls”—extensive maintenance that involves the complete refurbishment of a locomotive, self-propelled rolling stock or a self-propelled trainset once it reaches the mid-point of its useful life.

You can’t judge a trainset’s carbon impact by its emissions alone. Why? Because if rail options didn’t exist, most passengers would opt for other transport modes that generate more emissions and do more to accelerate climate change.

Because of this, rail transport, while not emissions-free, significantly reduces the transport sector’s total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

Based on this observation, our framework for comparison assumes that:

• Failure to invest in new equipment or mid-life overhauls means trainsets can’t run or can no longer run.
• Users are forced to opt for competing transport modes (modal shift).

The bottom line? The best way to judge eligible assets’ true carbon impact is by measuring emissions avoidance.

In the interests of completeness and consistency with the approach we use for the rail network as a whole, we want to take into account our assets’ full carbon footprint, meaning:

• emissions discharged during the construction/maintenance/end-of-asset-life (“grey carbon”) phases
• emissions discharged during train operations

We compare transport system emissions under two cases: with or without execution of the project.