The latest Biennial Update Report prepared by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change states that the transport sector accounted for 10 per cent of the total energy consumption in India. This translates into 274 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent (CO2e), almost 13 per cent of the total CO2e generated in the economy in 2016.

Interestingly, 90 per cent of the total CO2e emission is contributed by the road transport sector being the largest consumer of diesel and petrol. Railways’ contribution is merely three per cent.

There are multiple strategies to decarbonise the transport sector, namely modal shift — moving people from private to public transport, and from road/air to rail; fuel efficiency improvement; adoption of alternative fuel technology, including electric vehicles; and travel demand reduction.

However, implementing these strategies for modal shift are time consuming involving massive investments.

Transport experts always favoured development of energy efficient railways over road, particularly for carriage of goods. The National Transport Policy Committee, 1980 recommended that over 70 per cent of freight should be carried by Railways. The National Transport Development Policy Committee, 2014 lamented about Railways’ low investments in capacity augmentation.

Post 2015, the government made huge investments in capacity addition in Railways and intensive effort is required to achieve 45 per cent market share as envisaged in India’s nationally determined commitments (NDC) by 2030.

Modal shift

Moving people and freight on to railways serves as the key policy lever — modal shift. For instance, Railways is 4-6 times less emission intensive than road transport for per tonne kilometre of freight carried, despite the current energy mix.

A passenger train in India carries 800- 1,200 people at a time, and a goods train, 4,000- 4,500 tonnes of cargo.

Imagine what would be the impact on emissions had crores of people chosen to use bus or private vehicles, or billions of tonnes were carried by trucks. Indian Railways (IR) achieved the record freight loading of 1500 million tonnes during 2022-23. IR has successfully increased freight loading by 302 million tonnes and freight movement by 234 billion net tonne-kilometres between April 2019 and March 2023.

Assuming the lead distance of 570 km, same as Railways’ average lead for freight, and average payload of 16 tonnes per trip by a truck in India, this translates to about 19 million trips by trucks on Indian roads.

The corresponding emissions of 7.9 million tonnes of CO2 have been avoided during the three fiscal years.

IR is making efforts towards low-carbon transport in passenger and freight segments. Some of the initiatives include introducing new trains such as Vande Bharat and the focus on moving faster trains to bring back short, medium and long-distance passenger traffic; record investment in infrastructure augmentation – Dedicated Freight Corridors, terminal infrastructure, new lines, and electrification; new connectivity to unchartered territories; and above all ‘serious commitment to go Net-Zero by 2030’.

However, it is conceded that mere investments in additional capacity generation may not be adequate to increase the rail share in passenger and freight business. It requires proactive marketing strategies with competitive rating policy, designing commodity specific facilities and services, guaranteed transit time and timely delivery system, etc.

Lastly, to attain the desired targets and results, it would require policy and regulatory interventions, market research and shareholder consultation, and support from the research organisations.

Prakash is Distinguished Fellow, TERI and former Member (Traffic) at Railway Board; and Qamar is Associate Director, TERI

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