A factsheet on the costs of the Carbon Emission Trade System (ETS) of electricity for the rail sector in Europe includes the main conclusions of a joint survey on energy and ETS costs for the European railways. Given that EU railway companies are amongst the major users of electricity, rail is an ETS sector.

The survey analysed different carbon price scenarios. Taking the average European Emission Allowance (EUA) cost of 8 euros per tonne of CO2 and the total CO2 tonnes emitted from EU rail electricity traction, the total ETS bill for rail for is estimated to be € 114 million per year. This cost is approximately 4% of rail’s electricity costs. In case the carbon market reaches the envisaged price for ETS ’phase 4 for 2020-2030’ of € 25 per tonne of CO2, the indirect ETS costs for railway companies might reach a level of € 370 million per year.

This factsheet contains information obtained from the joint survey performed by UIC and CER on the economic impact of the energy consumption and the CO2 emissions for EU railways.

The survey, internally distributed for members, also demonstrates that energy consumption is an important financial driver for the European railways operating costs. The total amount of energy costs at EU sector is estimated to be 8.40% of total operating costs, corresponding to around € 6 billion. The share of operating costs coming from energy consumption depends on the profile of the analysed company, whilst infrastructure managers tend to have lower operating costs (between 0.5% and 2.5%), energy costs impact is higher for railway undertakings (between 7% and 29%).

The factsheet is available at the following link: http://www.cer.be/publications/latest-publications/eu-ets-reform