The European Railway Sector now takes more than 10% of its electricity from renewable sources, exceeding the 2020 target set for the transport sector by EU Directive 28/2009.
This is just one of the good news stories reported in the second edition of the joint UIC-IEA publication, Railway Handbook 2013: Energy Consumption and CO2 Emissions of the World Railway Sector, which was presented to the UIC Energy Environment and Sustainability (EES) Platform.
The handbook includes more than 130 graphs in addition to detailed facts and figures. Together these represent a sound body of scientific evidence illustrating that the rail sector is at the forefront of efficient, low carbon sustainable transport.
After the success of the first edition, UIC and the International Energy Agency, the world’s foremost authority on Energy Statistics, have strengthened cooperation by signing a Partnership Agreement. This sets out a commitment to consolidate our respective databases with the aim of providing policy and decision makers with high quality data on energy consumption and CO2 emissions for the railway sector.
“We know that the data we are publishing are being used in many important institutions, such as for example the WGIII of IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). These organisations are using the first edition intensively for their upcoming report”, said Francois Cuenot from IEA. “This demonstrates that there is a real need for this kind of information and that the strong performance of rail is reaching the right desks, where policy makers take decisions on the future of mobility.”
This new edition presents a more detailed examination of rail energy and emissions statistics, and for the first time, presents aggregate data on worldwide rail activity and energy consumption.
As stressed during the EES Platform, moving towards sustainable mobility requires both integrated and efficient transport systems as well as secure and clean energy. The modal shift to rail can be a major driver for the decarbonisation of the transport sector, as clearly illustrated by the dataset presented in the Handbook.
This publication has only been possible thanks to the support of UIC members and their annual contributions to UIC Statistics. The UIC Sustainable Development Unit would like to thank our members and hope that the new publication does justice to their valuable contributions.
The official external launch of the new edition will take place this week at COP 19 in Warsaw together with the IEA.
A digital copy is available at: http://www.uic.org/spip.php?article3193
