With a goal of transforming Indian Railways into Green Railways by 2030, the Ministry of Railways, has taken a number of major initiatives towards mitigation of global warming and combating climate change.
To promote Green environment and clean energy while making the Indian Railways a global leader in sustainable mass transport solutions.
- To promote energy conservation measures
- To maximize the use of alternate forms of clean energy,thereby minimizing the carbon footprint of Railways.
- To provide clean and hygienic environment to customers.
- To promote conservation of water and other natural resources.
- To march towards Zero waste discharge from the major Railway units.
- To promote Green built-up spaces and expand tree-cover.
- Building in house capacity to set up an effective Environment Management System.
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. 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. Previously, only 3,835 km electrification work was completed during the period 2009-14.Railways has fixed a target of electrification of 7000 RKM for the year 2020-21. All routes on BG network have been planned to be electrified by December 2023. Indian Railways is focusing on electrification of last mile connectivity & missing links. With this in mind 365 km major connectivity work has been commissioned during COVID period.
Railways has fixed a target of electrification of 7000 RKM for the year 2020-21. All routes on BG network have been planned to be electrified by December 2023. Indian Railways is focusing on electrification of last mile connectivity & missing links. With this in mind 365 km major connectivity work has been commissioned during COVID period. as 51,000 hectare of land potential of installing 20 GW land based solar plants. The Solar power so generated will be fed to Central / State Grid or directly to 25 kV AC traction system. Railway Energy Management Company Limited (REMCL), a Joint Venture Company of Indian Railways (49 % Equity) and RITES Limited (51 % Equity), has been mandated for proliferation of taking up land-based project. One project of 1.7 MW at Bina (Madhya Pradesh) in collaboration with Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) has already been installed and is presently under extensive testing. This is First of its kind of solar project in the world.
In the wind energy sector, 103 MW wind-based power plants have already been commissioned. Among them, 26 MW is in Rajasthan (Jaisalmer), 21 MW is in Tamil Nadu and 56.4 MW is in Maharashtra (Sangli). Indian Railways has also planned to set up 200 MW wind energy plants in next 2 years in Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Rajasthan and Karnataka.
Realizing its role in climate change Indian Railways has started other Green Initiatives like 100 per cent LED illumination of buildings and stations. Indian Railways has also acquired Green Certification from CIII to 7 Production Units (PUs), 39 Workshops, 6 Diesel sheds and 1 Stores depot. 14 Railway Stations and 21 other buildings/ campuses have also 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 (HOG), unleashing about 70 million litre diesel/ Rs 450 crore per annum potential of saving. In HOG technology the power is drawn from the Overhead Electric supply. The on-board power generator cars which used to make huge noise and emit fumes are slowly being done away with. In the field of Green Initiatives a total of 69,000 coaches have been fitted with more than 2,44,000 bio-toilets in Indian Railways.