T618: Improving rail’s energy efficiency

Topic

Energy

Description

This project looked at the ways that the railway currently uses energy for traction and non-traction purposes to assess current efficiency and recommend improvements.

Abstract

Whilst rail has an established and deserved reputation as an efficient and clean form of transport, the industry has become increasingly aware of the need to use energy even more efficiently given the associated financial and environmental implications. Consequently, the way in which Britain’s rail industry consumes traction and non-traction energy has been researched with a view to identifying the potential for making savings. A number of significant opportunities for saving energy have been identified, some of which can be realised short term. Other opportunities will take longer as they are typically more complex and may require, for example, many parties to take coordinated action, the development of emerging technology or are related to progressive replacement of long life high value assets. With the measures widely implemented there is a real prospect of saving energy costs in the order of £68m pa in the next few years and reducing consequential CO2 emissions by around 521,000 tonnes pa.