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Alstom in talks to run double-decker trains on Channel Tunnel route

French company’s high-speed trains could increase capacity and lower fares between London and continental Europe

Alstom is in talks to run high-speed, double-decker trains through the Channel Tunnel in a move that would cut prices and increase capacity, as the world’s second-largest trainmaker seeks to benefit from increased European rail demand.

Chief executive Henri Poupart-Lafarge said the company’s trains could increase traffic on routes from London to mainland Europe, adding that its Avelia Horizon would be able to run through the undersea Channel Tunnel.

“The double-decker train has a lot of advantages. It’s a very high-speed train with the lowest cost per seat and the highest capacity,” he told the Financial Times.

The new trains can run at more than 300km/h and Alstom has already signed contracts to provide them to French rail operator SNCF, although deliveries have been repeatedly delayed and are not expected until 2026.

Any new trains running on Eurostar’s services need to be approved by the operator, a process that can take “some years”, he added. Trains running from London to mainland Europe would also need to be approved by regulators and comply with the Channel Tunnel’s strict safety rules.

The comments come amid surging rail demand in Europe and as new providers seek to compete with Eurostar. Last week, the UK and Swiss governments outlined plans to encourage direct services between London and Switzerland.

Poupart-Lafarge declined to comment on commercial discussions but said “such an order would take years”. He added that the business “talks basically to everybody” and the trains had been designed to operate on all major European lines.

“We can propose [the train] through the tunnel,” he said. “Whether it’s Eurostar or other competitors, we’ll see.”

Rail providers including Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Group and the Italian state-owned railway are also exploring new services to challenge Eurostar’s 30-year monopoly on the link from the UK to mainland Europe.

Securing new trains that are certified to run through the Channel Tunnel remains one of the biggest challenges for the proposed new entrants, industry experts have said.

Alstom has benefited from increasing competition on routes in mainland Europe, signing an €850mn contract to provide and maintain 12 of its double-decker trains for Proxima, a newly established private operator in France.

Poupart-Lafarge said that modernisation of European rail infrastructure and increased traffic would also benefit the company in the years ahead. It has already seen recent order growth in Germany, including a €3.6bn contract to provide commuter trains for the S-Bahn Rheinland network in western Germany.

Strong demand in Europe helped the business report an increase in orders to €19.8bn in the year to March 31, an increase of 4.7 per cent, and slightly ahead of analysts’ estimates.

The business has also reduced its debt load from €3bn at the end of March 2024 to €434mn the following year. Last year, the company was rocked by a cash flow warning linked to slower than expected deliveries and issues with contracts inherited from Bombardier, the Canadian company it acquired in 2021.

It launched a €1bn capital raise in May to help cut its debt and sold off a US signalling business, as well as selling a German rail factory to defence company KNDS, which plans to repurpose the site to build tanks.

Poupart-Lafarge said its debt challenges “seemed to be water under the bridge”, adding that the company would not seek to sell off any more divisions.

However, the company will not pay a dividend for the 2024-25 fiscal year, with Poupart-Lafarge saying it would do so when it was in a “neutral cash situation”.

Copenhagen will examine pros and cons of using small modular reactors to balance renewables in its energy mix

Denmark is looking at whether to end its 40-year ban on nuclear energy as the Scandinavian wind energy powerhouse examines the best ways to avoid a similar blackout to last month’s outage in Spain and Portugal.

Lars Aagaard, Denmark’s minister for climate, energy and utilities, told Danish newspaper Politiken that the centrist coalition in Copenhagen would take a year to analyse the pros and cons of reviving nuclear power.

A lifting of its ban from 1985 would put Denmark in a growing group of countries looking at nuclear energy to help balance renewable sources in their electricity mix.

Neighbouring Sweden’s rightwing government is trying to revive nuclear power in the country, which still has three plants in operation, after big debates over closing them ever since the Three Mile Island accident in the US in 1979.

Denmark has one of the highest shares of renewable energy in its electricity mix in Europe thanks to vast offshore wind farms along its coast.

It uses coal and gas power as well as interconnectors to countries such as Sweden and Norway — which have nuclear and hydro resources — to ensure a low level of power interruptions by European standards.

But four rightwing opposition parties in Denmark’s parliament are keen to reintroduce nuclear power in Denmark and have tabled a debate with Aagaard for Wednesday.

“We observe that there is a development under way with new nuclear power technologies: small modular reactors,” Aagaard told Politiken.

The government had decided to launch an analysis of the potential of this new technology, he said, but added that “it is not enough that they have potential. We also need to know what it means for Danish society.”

SMRs, which are built in factories and potentially offer shorter construction times than large plants, have attracted significant investor enthusiasm globally, but many are still in design stages or awaiting regulatory approval. 

Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Denmark’s former prime minister and an ex-secretary general of Nato, told the Financial Times he was in favour of lifting the “ridiculous” ban. 

“Wind and solar are good as long as you have wind and sunshine. But you have to have a non-fossil base load and it’s ridiculous to exclude nuclear power in advance . . . My guess is that this is a process [from the government] towards lifting the ban,” he said.

Last month, a fund backed by Danish billionaire Joachim Ante announced plans to raise €350mn ($397mn) to back the advanced nuclear industry and its supply chain.

92 Capital is betting on a nuclear power renaissance because of a broader rise in concerns over energy security. Ante, who founded video game software company Unity, has so far put in €50mn of his own funds.

An earlier version of the fund, 92 Ventures, invested in Sweden’s Blykalla and Finland’s Steady Energy Oy, both developers of SMRs.

There is particular controversy in Denmark over where any new nuclear power plants would be situated and where waste from reactors would be stored.

Denmark had a research reactor just outside Copenhagen until 2001 where the waste is stored. Its parliament decided in 2018 to establish a secure disposal facility for the waste by 2073.

Large nuclear reactors have dwindled in popularity since accidents including Chornobyl in 1986 and Fukushima in 2011.

Recent large nuclear power projects in countries including France, the UK and Finland have run hugely over budget. Finland opened the Olkiluoto 3 plant in 2023, 14 years later than planned and almost quadruple the initial budget.