The Indian Railways will transform into Green Railways by 2030 citing the Ministry of Railways has taken a number of major initiatives towards mitigation of global warming and combating climate change.
The numerous initiatives taken were railway electrification, improving energy efficiency of locomotives & trains and fixed installations, green certification for installations/stations, fitting bio toilets in coaches and switching to renewable sources of energy are parts of its strategy of achieving net zero carbon emission, stated the Rail ministry on Monday.
According to the ministry data, Indian Railways has completed electrification of more than 40,000 Route km (RKM) (63% of BG routes) in which 18,605 km electrification work has been done during 2014-20. All routes on BG network have been planned to be electrified by December 2023.
Realizing its role in climate change Indian Railways has started other Green Initiatives like 100 per cent LED illumination of buildings and stations. A total of 69,000 coaches have been fitted with more than 2,44,000 bio-toilets in Indian Railways. 14 Railway Stations and 21 other buildings/ campuses have been Green certified. Other than this 215 Stations have been certified with Environment Management System (EMS)/ISO 14001.
Total 505 pairs of trains have been converted to Head on Generation unleashing approx 70 million liter diesel/ Rs 450 crore per annum potential of saving. Energy Efficiency Studies of all 8 Production Units & 12 workshops have been completed under MOU with CII resulting in 15% improvement in energy efficiency.
Indian Railways has also taken a number of initiatives to promote solar energy. Indian Railways is working to harness the potential of 500 Mega Watt (MW) energy through rooftop Solar panels (Developer model) and the target for completion of these plants is December 2022. To date, 100 Mega Watt (MW) of solar plants have been commissioned on roof-tops of various buildings including 900 stations. Besides this, Indian Railways is trying to produce power from land Based Solar installations for running trains, the ministry said.
