Rail industry carbon

Electrifying the rail network is at the core of our industry’s plans to reduce traction carbon emissions.

Rail growth and a low carbon economy

As a low carbon mode of transport, rail can play a key role in helping to minimise the environmental impact of travel. Rail creates just 61g of CO₂ per passenger kilometre compared to 140g of CO₂ per passenger kilometre of a car (data based on DEFRA conversion factors and figure for cars adjusted based on average occupancy rate of 1.5).

As the rail industry continues to grow, carbon will remain a key issue. Every investment to expand our network, improve journey times and increase rail’s capacity has a carbon footprint impact to manage. Energy efficiency is therefore at the core of our efforts.

Traction energy

For the rail industry, we talk about reducing carbon emissions from traction energy. Traction energy is simply the energy used to power the trains that run on the rail network.

The rail network carries both diesel and electric trains. Approximately 40 per cent of all railway miles in Britain are electrified. These electrified lines carry a little under half of all passenger train miles and around five per cent of the freight train mileage. We procure the electricity used by train operators, supplying it to them through our infrastructure. We currently spend around £258m per year on traction electricity, a figure which may increase in the future as energy prices rise. We can cut both running costs and carbon emissions by reducing this energy consumption.

Network Rail’s role

Part of our role is to be as efficient as possible in the transmission of the electricity we procure, minimising any energy loss in supply.

We can also help to provide more accurate measurement systems to allocate both the cost and the carbon impact of each train journey to each operator. With this information, operators can monitor and set targets to reduce their electricity consumption, costs and emissions.

As part of an industry initiative we have set aside £8.75m to fit meters to trains, which will provide accurate energy measurements. The project has reviewed metering types and will recommend meters for each train type. Our expectation is that as an industry, metering electric trains, delivering training, and focusing on efficiency could reduce consumption by around 20 per cent by 2014.

Electrification

Network electrification is at the core of the rail industry’s plans to reduce traction carbon emissions. Electric rail services emit less carbon than their diesel counterparts and have additional benefits in terms of reduced local impacts on air quality and noise. The carbon intensity of electricity generation is set to fall over the coming decades, meaning that electric trains will be able to run with even lower carbon emissions in the longer-term.

In 2009, the Government announced a £1.1bn programme of electrification to help achieve these benefits. The rail industry is now looking at the next phase of electrification in its long-term plans.