The monitoring of progress towards the UIC-CER Sustainable Mobility targets was published last week. The document ‘2016 Report’ of the ‘Environmental Strategy Reporting System’ includes a full monitoring of the indicators on Climate Protection, Energy Efficiency and Exhaust Emissions.
This monitoring process was possible thanks to the contributions of the UIC members and the active involvement of the Energy Efficiency and CO2 experts’ network and the technical support of the Sustainable Development Foundation based in Rome.
In terms of the main results, the specific energy consumption has been reduced by 20.4% in the passenger sector and by 25.9% in the freight sector from 1990 to 2014 matching the linear trend to reach the 2030 targets.
Regarding the specific CO2 emissions, the passenger sector presents a results in a Market-based approach of 45% reduction in the period 1990-2014, while they decreased by 37% according to the Location-based approach. Both the performances are in line with the target, being below the expected “linear” value for 2014 (-35%).
In the case of the freight sector, specific CO2 emissions decreased by 50% from 1990 to 2014 considering the market-based approach, and by 46% considering the location-based approach. Both of them correspond to a higher reduction than the expected “linear” value for 2014 (35%).
Regarding exhaust emissions, total particulate matter (PM) emissions have been reduced by about 30% in 2014 from the 2005 baseline, which is about 15% more than the linear performance expected in 2014, and total nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions have been reduced by 40% in 2014 from the 2005 baseline, 26% more than the expected linear performance.
The report is available for members of UIC Extranet at this link:
This information has been used to update the Eco-Passenger environmental impacts calculator (http://ecopassenger.org/bin/query.exe/en?L=vs_uic), which launched the new updated version of the methodology and implemented the latest data from railway environmental performance.
The latest update of the tool including a version for smart-phones operatives systems, allows improves the usability for 25% of users visiting EcoPassenger.org from mobiles and tablets. The users of the tool include 60% of visitors aged between 18 and 35 years and one third of visitors are from the Netherlands and Italy. The layout and usability update performed in November 2015 enables four times as many users to visit the website (see eNews 493 for further details).
In addition, a new UIC report on “Technologies and Potential Developments for Energy Efficiency and CO2 reduction in Rail Systems” has been published on the UIC website: http://bit.ly/2gDwktJ
The report, produced by UIC with the technical support of the Spanish Railways Foundation (FFE), includes the main measures and actions available to improve energy and carbon efficiency in the railways.
The document highlights the potential of making energy improvements in the mid-term, including a revision of the latest research on energy reduction. The document also analyses the best practices carried out by rail companies to encourage energy efficiency.
According to all the possible actions to improve energy efficiency, the study concludes by stating that the 2030 rail sector as a whole has potential in using existing technologies to make improvements of 20 to 30% of energy consumptions and carbon emissions.
