RailTech Europe ’26 opens in Utrecht with focus on net-zero delivery

RailTech Europe ’26 opened its doors today in Utrecht, as Europe’s rail community gathered at the Jaarbeurs conference centre for two days of debate on decarbonisation, resilience and the sector’s strategic direction. Day 1 was dedicated to one central question: how to turn net-zero ambition into delivery across policy, infrastructure and operations. With “Get on Track to Net-Zero: Decarbonising rail in action” as the Day 1 theme, the conference set out to test what decarbonisation looks like when it hits procurement rules, construction materials and real-world delivery, not just climate targets. The first presentation came from Laura Martiniello, President of Italy’s Italferr, which has recently rebranded as FS Engineering. With a background in infrastructure finance and public–private partnerships, she argued that sustainability in rail infrastructure starts with making the transition financially viable. “To make the transition, we need from the very start to finance it,” she said. But perhaps equally important, she added, was pushing forward sustainable procurement, because the design phase sets the conditions contractors must follow later. “When you design the infrastructure, you give the directions and the rules for the contractors that come later to realise the infrastructure,” she said. Laura Martiniello, President of FS Engineering, explains how to boost sustainability from the outset. © ProMedia In Italy, that logic is increasingly enforced through digitalisation. “By law we require that all the projects are realised with BIM,” she added, referring to Building Information Modelling, the digital modelling system used to design and simulate projects before construction. It also allows designers to swap materials in and out of the model and test their lifecycle impacts during the design phase. That, she argued, helps sustainability requirements get locked in early, but it also pushes pressure down the supply chain: smaller firms have to “make this technological jump” to stay in the market. Electrification and trillions for TEN-T Next up was Carlos Rico, rail policy officer at Transport & Environment, who offered a policy perspective on how Europe is progressing towards a greener rail system. Electrification remains a central pillar of that transition, he said, pointing out that Europe performs relatively well globally, with more than 65% of the network already electrified. The challenge, though, is uneven progress across the continent. “If we look at Europe as a whole, we are doing relatively well compared to other parts of the world,” he said, but the picture varies widely between western and eastern Europe. He went on to point to the cost of installing and maintaining overhead electrification as one of the main barriers, particularly on lines with lower traffic levels where the business case is harder to justify. In those cases, European funding becomes critical. “I would say the main barrier is the cost of both building the infrastructure for electrification but also to maintain it,” he said, arguing that EU mechanisms such as the Connecting Europe Facility will be key to bridging the gap as TEN-T upgrades progress. At the same time, he suggested that battery-electric trains are becoming increasingly common, meaning some lower-traffic lines may not require full electrification in the future. But on funding overall, Rico did not equivocate: “It’s never sufficient.” RailTech Europe ’26 exhibition: Workshops, innovations and digital rail take centre stage Building green tracks: materials, procurement and circularity SBB Infrastructure’s Head of Environment and Sustainability Sarah Weber then turned the discussion to what it takes to make decarbonisation workable inside an infrastructure manager that sits outside the EU framework and therefore operates under its own systems and regulations. If rail is serious about meeting climate targets, she argued, sustainability can no longer sit on the margins of the organisation. “If you want to meet global sustainability targets, if you want to meet climate targets, it’s not the time anymore to do small things or pilots. Sustainability must be integrated as a whole in our processes.” Weber focused in particular on indirect or Scope-3 emissions and construction materials, which represent a growing share of rail’s climate footprint. Circular economy measures such as reusing metal components or refurbishing catenary equipment can help cut emissions and costs at the same time, she said, but they only go so far. The real challenge lies in the carbon intensity of core materials such as steel. Circularity can deliver some reductions, but tackling indirect emissions from materials will ultimately require deeper changes across the supply chain. Sustainability from the supplier side Speaking afterwards in a panel alongside Weber, Denis Coppieters, CEO of Thiomaterials, drilled into what those ambitions look like from the supplier side. Coppieters said rail’s safety-first culture and long investment horizons make it a slow market for new materials, even when the carbon case is strong. “Everyone wants to be green, but then being a player in that becomes more and more complicated,” he said. He pointed to Thiomaterials’ cement-free concrete, which he said can cut CO₂ by 50–60%, but comes with an overcost and requires years of testing and approvals before infrastructure managers will take it into mainstream procurement. For suppliers, that means navigating a market where innovation takes years to reach deployment and where infrastructure managers often demand fully proven solutions that require significant upfront investment. “In the railway industry it’s not in months, it’s in years,” Coppieters said, describing the long development cycles required to bring new products to market. Weber added that close cooperation with suppliers was essential, particularly in smaller rail systems such as Switzerland’s, where infrastructure managers work directly with a limited pool of partners to introduce new materials and technologies into procurement processes. But perhaps the key takeaway, with plenty of talk in the room about the inevitable premium for going green, was Weber’s insistence that the cost gap is often exaggerated. “A lot of times people talk about there is a lot more cost,” she said, pointing to a recent tender where sustainability weighting was around 20% but the extra cost came in at roughly 4%. “One needs to look at the reality.”