ProRail’s ambitions for less CO2 emissions are going well. Our goals for 2020 are almost reached. Preliminary figures for 2019 show that our energy consumption and CO2 emissions continue to decrease. As it stands, we are meeting our targets for this year.
2020: an important year
2020 is an important year for ProRails CO2 reduction plans, because then we want to achieve the objective of our Multi-year Sustainability Plan: to emit no more than 10 kilotonnes (kton) of CO2 equivalent with energy consumption. In 2010, emissions were still around 80 ktonnes. We want to save at least 5 ktonnes of CO2 per year in the material chain.
Own energy consumption further decreased
The preliminary figures show that in 2019 ProRail emitted about 10.1 kilotonnes (kton) of CO2 equivalent (the emissions of about 1250 households). A decrease of approximately 18 percent compared to 2018 (12.3 kton). The decrease is mainly due to lower exchange heating emissions, the purchase of green gas (75 percent more in 2019), fewer gas-fired switches and warmer weather in 2019.
Sustainable in tenders
In 2019, ProRail had a reduction of 14.7 kton CO2 equivalent (consumption of about 1838 households) in the material chain. This decrease is due to the use of sustainable GWW (especially DuboCalc) in the tendering of projects including renovation of the superstructure and by removing 176 points. ProRail will use Sustainable GWW more often and, where possible, remove more switches.
Generating sustainable electricity
In recent years we see that we have more and more self-generated electricity. In 2019 mainly due to the installation of solar panels at Zwolle station. ProRail will install solar panels at more locations.
New ambitions, new objectives after 2020
By 2030, ProRail wants to be climate neutral for its own energy consumption, and a reduction of 25 percent CO2 emissions in the material chain (about 35 kton years). To further reduce the CO2 footprint, ProRail is always looking for new possibilities. For example, we conduct research into how rails last longer, into sustainable material for station paving and we conduct a practical test with sustainable sleepers. In addition, we draw up guidelines for the reuse of track material such as switches.
Read here more about our CO2 policy.
(Source: Prorail)
