Coal news and updates

Railways aims to reduce emission intensity by 23%

India Coal Market Watch

November 11: Indian Railways has chalked out a plan to reduce its emission intensity by 23% by 2020 and further by 31% by the year 2030 compared to the level recorded in 2005, a senior official from South Eastern Railways (SER) said.

The measures proposed to achieve the target include reducing non-traction energy through increasing use of renewable energy sources and increasing the share of passenger and freight traffic by rail through capacity augmentation, among others, R K Gupta, General Manager, SER, recently said.

Railway’s energy intensity in carriage of goods is only 91 TJ/BTKM, compared to the roadways’ (heavy commercial vehicles) energy intensity of 1,125 TJ/BTKM, he said.

Railways also contributes only 4.33% of the total greenhouse gas emission (GHG) against 87.47% by road transport. As for energy intensity in carriage of passengers, Railways scores 71 TJ/BPKM versus 196 TJ/BPKM for road transport (by bus).

“As a result of various measures undertaken by Railways, the emission intensity of Railways has reduced from 12.38 tCO2 per million GTKm in 2005 to 10.81 tCO2 per million GTKm in 2014, a fall of 12.7%, Gupta said.