Railways to go LNG way to cut carbon footprint

The Railways has decided to gradually opt for liquefied natural gas on a large scale as part of its effort to reduce diesel consumption, greenhouse gas emissions and ensure major operational savings.

The Indian Railways and Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) have signed a MoU to explore the potential of LNG in a substantial manner in locomotives, factories and workshops.

“The induction of LNG in railways is likely to be in a phase-wise manner. We will begin with industrial uses in factories to usage in diesel multiple units and then in mainline diesel locomotives,” a senior Railway Ministry official said.

The Railways is currently dependent on refined petroleum products such as high speed diesel for locomotives and furnace oil in workshops and factories. At the moment, the transport behemoth uses approximately 250 crore litre of high speed diesel for locomotives annually.

“It costs around Rs 10,000 crore for the fuel and even if we manage to reduce 10 per cent of diesel consumption then the savings will be Rs 1,000 crore in a year,” the official said.

LNG opens up immense possibilities to use this low cost and environment-friendly fuel both for industrial and traction purposes. It is sourced from West Asia in special tankers with cryogenic facilities.

The fuel must be delivered to the end user through a ‘cold chain’ of cryogenic tanks and storages and special cryogenic road tankers.

“Due to the cumbersome and somewhat expensive storage and transportation facilities, large scale use of LNG has not taken off in areas far from the western coast. Now that cryogenic cold chain is becoming affordable, LNG can be used on a large scale,” he said.

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