Background of the Project

Railway energy and climate change
Rail transport contributes to climate change mainly through emissions from energy use in general, and emission of CO₂ from the combustion of fossil fuels, especially. The energy use in rail transport depends on the energy efficiency. Rail systems are characterised by their high efficiency. No other transport system has a similar volume capacity of transportation attained through such low levels of energy consumption use. The high energy efficiency is a main environmental characteristic of rail transport systems and apply both to passenger and freight rail transport.

Improving the energy efficiency further
Even though rail is more energy efficient than most other transport modes, significant efforts are made on the company level in the last decade to reduce the energy use further.
One key means of improving energy efficiency is for the Railways to deploy advanced technologies. The Railways have, on several occasions, put focus on the energy issue at special conferences, e.g. at UIC Conferences. The UIC - International Union of Railways is the world-wide organisation for railway co-operation and is active in all the fields involved in developing rail transport. The UIC-sub-commission "Energy Efficiency" initiated in 2001 a project where all relevant railway energy-saving technologies should be analysed, categorised and evaluated.


Main Objectives of the Project

The main objectives of the project can be summarised as follows:

Get a solid data base and an evaluation for energy efficient technologies, measures and projects for railways Distribute the results to interested people via an interactive web site and improve communication Identify the most promising technologies and measures and derive implementation strategies Identify technology fields with necessity for further research & development

The Project

The project consists of two sub-projects:

Evaluation of Energy Efficiency Technologies for Rolling Stock and Train Operation of Railways (EVENT)

In the project EVENT current information in the field of Energy Efficiency Technologies for Railways is being collated and present and future technologies are being evaluated for railway purposes. This will end up with a public accessible database of possible improvements on existent rolling stock or when procuring new material.

Knowledge Management for Energy-Efficiency Technologies of Railways (EVENT ComTool)

The findings from the project EVENT are being fed into databases, provided by an interactive, user-oriented communication tool, designed and programmed in the project EVENT ComTool. This database will enable the user to have an overview of the energy-efficiency potential as a percentage, given a fleet of wagons, locomotives and trainsets and the improvements decided.

Project Partners This project was realised by:

UIC - International Union of Railways - initiation, steering and funding of the project DB - Deutsche Bahn AG, Railway Environment Centre - project management IZT - Institute for Futures Studies and Technology Assessment - evaluation of energy efficiency technologies (sub-project EVENT) join and share - design and programming of the interactive website and the knowledge database (sub-project EVENT-ComTool)