Conference on decarbonisation of railways begins in New Delhi

Nov 03, 2016: The Ministry of Railways through Institution of Railways Electrical Engineer (IREE) in partnership with ASSOCHAM India has organised the ‘International Conference on Decarbonization of Indian Railways- Mission Electrification’ in New Delhi today.

The Conference aims at bringing various stakeholders on a common platform for exchange of ideas and to deliberate on implementable technological solutions and financing options to significantly increase pace of electrification and achieve the target for setting up of renewable energy installations with total capacity of 1000MW by 2020. The Conference will also project Indian Railways as an attractive investment destination considering its plans for huge investment in next 5 years towards modernization of its electrified network and use of renewable energy.

Aspects relating to policy, technological modernization, mechanization, innovations and financing models for railway electrification and de-carbonization are also likely to be discussed in the conference.

The National Transport Development Policy Committee (NTDPC), in its report, has identified electrification of railway tracks as a means to reduce fuel consumption. The report has recommended for taking up electrification on priority through systematically tackling the bottlenecks in progress of electrification projects. It has also suggested that electrification should be viewed as a means of making rail transport independent of imported fossil energy, while also provide a choice in sourcing energy. Moreover, electric traction allows regeneration of power while braking/coasting and feeding the network, thereby reducing overall consumption of energy and carbon emissions.

Currently 28,000 route kilometre of tracks are electrified (42 percent of the total network) carrying around two-thirds of total freight traffic and 50 percent of total passenger traffic. As against 800 kilometre of average electrification in the earlier years, 1600 route kilometre of railway tracks were electrified in 2015-’16.

To fast track the pace of electrification, Ministry of Railway would be involving PSUs like IRCON, RITES and PGCIL. Increase in the pace of electrification will reduce its fuel bill by Rs 10,000 crore annually as against the business as usual approach.