Mumbai: The Ministry of Railways, to transform Indian Railways into Green Railways by 2030, has taken many major initiatives towards mitigation of global warming and combat climate change. 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.

Railway electrification, improving the energy efficiency of locomotives and trains, 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.
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. Previously, only 3,835 km electrification work was completed during the period 2009-14. Indian Railways has fixed a target of electrification of 7,000 RKM for the year 2020-21.

All routes on the 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-19 period.

Major connectivity commissioned during the coronavirus outbreak period like Katni-Satna section (99 RKM) of Mumbai-Howrah via Allahabad route has been commissioned, providing an alternate route to Howrah. Likewise, Pachore-Maksi (88 RKM) section in Indore - Guna-Bina route has also been commissioned providing an alternate route to Maksi-Bhopal-Bina. On Howrah/Sealdah-SVD Katra via Patna route, Bhagalpur-Shivnarayanpur (45 RKM) section has been commissioned. On the route connecting Kariakal port to coal, fertilizer and steel plants of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, Thiruvarur - Karaikal port (46 RKM) section has been commissioned providing port connectivity to Erode, Coimbatore and Palghat.

Indian Railways has also taken several initiatives to promote solar energy. Indian Railways is working to harness the potential of 500 Mega Watt (MW) energy through rooftop solar panels for the developer model. Till date, 100 MegaWatt (MW) of solar plants have been commissioned on roof-tops of various buildings including 900 stations. Solar plants with a combined capacity of 400 MW are under different stages of execution. Tenders are already awarded for 245 MW and the target for completion of these plants is December 2022.

Besides this, Indian Railways is trying to produce power from land-based solar installations for running trains. Indian Railway has 51,000 hectares of the land potential of installing 20 GW land based solar plants. The Solar power generated will be fed to Central / State grid or directly to the 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 the proliferation of taking up land based projects.

One project of 1.7 MW at Bina in Madhya Pradesh in collaboration with Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) has already been installed and is presently under extensive testing. This is the 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 Jaisalmer, Rajasthan, 21 MW is in Tamil Nadu and 56.4 MW in Sangli, Maharashtra. 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 have also acquired green certification from CIII to 7 production Units (PUs), 39 workshops, 6 diesel sheds and 1 store depot. 14 railway stations and 21 other buildings/ campuses have also been green certified. Other than this, 215 stations have been certified with the Environment Management System (EMS)/ISO 14001.

Total 505 pairs of trains have been converted to Head On Generation (HOG), unleashing nearly to 70 million litre diesel/ Rs 450 crore per annum potential of saving.