Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask His Majesty's Government what discussions they have had with the Swiss Federal Railways regarding its trial of laying solar panels in between railway tracks in order to generate electricity.

Network Rail has had discussions with the Swiss Federal Railways and is aware of their strategic priorities, broadly aligning with its own.

The proposed solar panel innovation is interesting, but an initial analysis suggests that the proposal underestimates the challenges of maintaining the solar panels in a dusty, vibrating environment. The business case has also not been proven, noting that the deployment of assets in a safety critical location is necessarily more expensive than using land away from the track.

Finally, Network Rail is concerned that the installation would also conceal track fastenings making it more difficult to safely maintain the railway with Network Rail’s video track inspection system.

Network Rail is aiming for 100 percent of its non-traction electricity to be from renewable sources by 2030 and has committed to seek to reduce the carbon footprint of traction electricity consumption by directly purchasing renewable electricity from specific new renewable projects. Network Rail is at an early stage in the process of reviewing options for feeding renewable electricity directly into the traction power supply. Through our First of a Kind scheme the Department for Transport has supported various projects looking at feeding renewable electricity into the railway. This includes providing £750,000 to Riding Sunbeams to develop and trial an innovative connection between renewable electricity generation and overhead electrification.