STUDIES ON INNOVATION IN CLIMATE FINANCE FOR RAIL

The study should aim to provide actionable recommendations to help railways to access the growing pool of climate finance to support their transition to low-carbon, climate-resilient transport system , and can include the following:

• Conducting a comprehensive review of existing green financing instruments and their applicability to the rail sector, identifying key barriers and opportunities for increased uptake.
• Analysing the investment criteria and processes, and identifying strategies for an increased utilization of carbon credits by rail companies, as means to offset emissions, generate revenue, etc. This includes the investigation of innovative approaches to aggregate and scale up smaller rail initiatives, to meet minimum investment thresholds for climate finance. Explore the possibility of innovative financing structures as well that blend public, private and climate-specific funding sources to maximize investment in low-carbon rail infrastructure and operations. The study shall provide actionable and data-driven recommendations for the rail industry, to assist them in their decision making towards identification and implementation of decarbonization strategies capturing sustainable finance opportunities.
• Providing guidelines/recommendations for harmonising processes for monitoring, reporting and evaluation across European rail companies of accurate gas emissions measurements. The aim of these is to enable the progress towards achieving the decarbonization goals, while providing clear, easy to follow instructions regarding: regulatory requirements; access to financing channels; integration of climate-related considerations into corporate strategy and operations.
• Investigating the contribution and opportunities of climate finance instruments in enabling the transition towards rail passenger and freight transport from other less green transport modes, as a key step in achieving the EU green deal objectives. Provide recommendation for bridging the gaps in terms of policies, regulations, and incentives fostering the investments and use of low-carbon transport modes and in particular for rail fostering the market take-up of novel technologies and solutions into the existing European rail network and systems.

Gender dimension

In this topic the integration of the gender dimension (sex and gender analysis) in research and innovation content is not a mandatory requirement.