Julia Godoy

Abstract

The transportation sector accounts for approximately 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Governmental strategies aimed at reducing its emissions rely on rail to achieve modal shift objectives. However, they usually do not clearly specify how this transition should be implemented, lacking clear methodologies and decision-making tools. The energy transition represents one of today’s defining global challenges, shaping economic strategies, industrial policies, and public investment priorities. It is also a key issue within the railway sector. In Europe, railway operators rank amongst the largest electricity consumers. Nevertheless, thousands of kilometres across the continent are still operated using diesel traction. And this is especially true at a global level, where diesel remains the most common traction technology, accounting for 53% of total rail energy demand. In the field, railway infrastructure managers electrify a railway line only if a socio-economic break-even point is reached—that is, when train frequency is sufficiently high for the heavy infrastructure costs to be offset by the lower operational costs of electric traction. Railway lines that do not reach such point are most often diesel-fuelled and only recently begun to be evaluated for alternative energy-carriers’ technologies. Furthermore, to assess feasibility and overall viability, infrastructure projects are evaluated based on users’ transportation needs, urban planning and, in some cases, environmental impacts. However, they systematically fail to consider potential energy synergies that would meet other territorial needs. As a result of these reflections, this research aims to fill the methodological gap by developing an approach to promote synergies between railway energy infrastructure and territories. The core idea is that synergies could be orchestrated from the earliest conception stage, thus integrating energy considerations as intrinsic components of infrastructure planning.