The SNCF group offers a complete range of mobility solutions through its various businesses. The group's mission is to simplify travel, make the transport of people and goods more fluid, and develop the mobility of tomorrow. Every day, the SNCF Group transports more than 15 million passengers worldwide.
The SNCF also manages, operates and maintains the national rail network belonging to the French State. Today, the group is present in more than 60 countries worldwide, and employs more than 276,000 people, including more than 210,000 in France.
Through the activities of its various subsidiaries (SNCF Réseau, SNCF Gares & Connexions, Rail Logistics Europe, SNCF Voyageurs, Geodis and Keolis), the SNCF group is responding to the challenges of sustainable mobility by placing CSR at the heart of its strategy.
As a leader in rail and multimodal transport solutions, SNCF has a crucial role to play in decarbonizing the transport sector, which accounts for between 25% and 30% of national GHG emissions. The SNCF is investing massively in innovation programs to create high-performance, largely decarbonized rail systems that meet the new mobility challenges of metropolises and territories.
As part of these innovation programs, the TELLi project aims to develop a new, innovative Light Train featuring electric motorization and on-board battery energy storage. By virtue of its weight, capacity and motorization, the TELLi train will be better suited to the needs and operating constraints of the region's thinly-served lines, commonly known as "petites lignes", whose revitalization is a response to the need for low-carbon mobility in suburban areas.
Indeed, over 2 million people live less than 15 minutes' walk from a station served by a "petite ligne", and their operation around an adapted and reliable transport offer represents a prime opportunity to offer an alternative to the "all-car" approach, and thus encourage modal shift and combat global warming.
The SNCF teams in charge of eco-design for the TELLi were won over by the utilitarian approach and rapid, visual simulation capabilities offered by Traace's LCA / PCF module.
Traace's LCA / PCF module enables you to :
The SNCF teams in charge of the TELLi project relied on Traace's LCA module to quickly test certain system design hypotheses, validate or invalidate certain intuitions about the impact of the train's various components and life stages, and finally share visual and educational LCA simulations internally in order toalign teams on the eco-design topics to be prioritized and get stakeholders on board by validating the project's significant positive impact compared to other existing transport options.
SNCF teams worked with Traace to produce various LCA models incorporating all possible components for the TELLi train, different battery chemistry options, several usage scenarios and a range of production and recycling possibilities for the train's components at the end of its life.
In addition to the components of the TELLi train, the SNCF teams added those required for the "large mesh" Product Carbon Footprint of other means of daily transport that the TELLi train would replace, in order to be able to compare the carbon intensities in intensity per passenger of each option.
The various scenarios then simulated using Traace's LCA module enabled SNCF teams to quickly highlight several key elements thanks to the orders of magnitude obtained:
➡️ The production area and associated raw material and/or product transport stages represent a minimal impact on the train's entire life cycle. Producing the TELLi train in China, Poland or France before transporting it to France would represent negligible variations in CO2 emissions compared with the overall emissions of the train's other components and life cycle.
➡️ Electric motorization and, more specifically, battery chemistry (LFP for Lithium-Fer-Phosphate or NMC for Nickel-Manganese-Cobalt) play a major role in the train's ecological impact. Highlighting the importance of battery chemistry has enabled the design teams to focus their efforts on the various possible scenarios in terms of battery chemistry, and on what each scenario would imply for the system as a whole.
LFP batteries have the advantage of being more economical, having a longer life and better availability and production conditions for metals. Nevertheless, for the same power, they are bulkier than NMC batteries. All these parameters need to be taken into account when considering the positioning of the battery in the train, the location and density of recharging stations along the route, and the recycling options available.
From an ecological point of view, Traace's LCA module has identified an ideal scenario for the teams in charge of designing the system to explore: using cobalt-free batteries manufactured in France.
* The LCA results shown here are fictitious and given for information only, to help understand how the module works, the SNCF teams' approach and the orders of magnitude observed. They do not correspond to the reality of the project for reasons of data confidentiality.
Sharing the visual and entertaining LCA simulations carried out in Traace internally has made it easier for SNCF teams to communicate the benefits of the TELLi train, and to establish ideas and orders of magnitude with all the teams involved.
While there are many other parameters to consider when it comes to the environmental benefits of the TELLi train compared with other transport options (lifespan, impact of rail VS impact of freeways, etc.), initial estimates show that the TELLi train, which will have a capacity of 80 passengers, will have a carbon intensity per passenger 100 times lower than the use of private cars for equivalent journeys.
Traace's LCA module was the tool we needed to quickly obtain reliable impact results to communicate externally and to use for internal awareness-raising around the TELLi project.
The module's ease of use made it easy for us to get to grips with the tool and quickly validate the eco-design avenues to be pursued as part of the project.
