Life Cycle Assessment of Alternative Traction Options for Non-Electrified Regional Railway Lines

Life Cycle Assessment of Alternative Traction Options for Non-Electrified Regional Railway Lines

Kapetanović, M. (TU Delft Transport and Planning)
Nunez, Alfredo (TU Delft Railway Engineering)
van Oort, N. (TU Delft Transport and Planning)
Goverde, R.M.P. (TU Delft Transport and Planning)

2022

The railway sector is facing significant challenges in addressing the increasing concerns related to climate change, environmental pollution and scarcity of resources. This especially applies to often non-electrified regional railway networks, with passenger services provided by diesel-driven vehicles. Innovative propulsion system concepts offer significant improvement of energy efficiency and reduction of overall environmental impact from train operation. This study presents a life cycle assessment of greenhouse gas emissions linked to the implementation of alternative powertrain systems in conventional diesel-electric multiple-unit vehicles employed on the regional railway lines in the northern Netherlands. The analysis encompassed the retrofit of a standard vehicle to its hybrid-electric, fuel cell-electric and battery-electric counterparts, and a comparative assessment of life cycle emissions during a ten-year time horizon. Results indicated significant impact of the production pathway for alternative energy carriers to diesel, namely hydrogen and electricity. The largest reduction in total emissions (96.80%) is obtained for a fuel cell-electric vehicle running on hydrogen produced from electrolysis, with slightly lower performance shown by the battery-electric configuration using green electricity produced from wind power (95.92%). Maintaining the diesel engine in the hybrid-electric alternative leads to a potential overall emission reduction of about 27%, as a result of improved fuel economy offered by the implemented energy storage system, and could be considered as a cost-effective transition solution towards carbon-neutral trains operation.

regional railways
greenhouse gas emissions
life cycle assessment
alternative propulsion systems

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:7196acb7-a9ad-4683-9c0b-d66a12c6fbc5

2023-07-01

World Congress on Railway Research 2022, 2022-06-06 → 2022-06-10, International Convention Centre Birmingham, Birmingham, United Kingdom

Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository 'You share, we take care!' - Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.

Institutional Repository

conference paper

© 2022 M. Kapetanović, Alfredo Nunez, N. van Oort, R.M.P. Goverde