Part 1 of our blog-series: Traction industry and the (p)art of DC power electronics
Reducing environmental pollution is one of the biggest challenges we are facing today. There are many global policies on climate control, in particular related to low carbon transport and infrastructure where the main aim is to reduce emission within the mobility sector by 50% in the next few decades.
Emissions must decrease while the demands for transportation keeps increasing
In order to meet the goal of keeping the global climate at a level below 2 degrees of pre-industrial levels, the emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) have to go down, while the demand for transportation rises globally. Rail transport is already a quite efficient mode from an ecological and economical point of view. Still, I have always believed that clear methodologies have to be formed to ensure the most resource-efficient way of operating this mode of transport in the future.
Until now, methodologies assessing the environmental impacts almost exclusively focus only on tailpipe-emissions produced by rail operation and neglected the emissions caused by producing, maintaining and disposing railway infrastructure. However, within the European rail network of over 200,000 kilometers resource consumption, extraction, construction, maintenance and disposal of railway infrastructure components produce huge environmental impacts. Hence, there is great potential for producing and choosing the most sustainable components within railway infrastructure from an ecological perspective.
Read the complete blog on our website. We will also publish the Dutch translation soon.
