1.A.3.c - Transport: Railways

In category 1.A.3.c - Railways, emissions from fuel combustion in German railways and from the related abrasion and wear of contact line, braking systems and tyres on rails are reported.

Germany's railway sector is undergoing a long-term modernisation process, aimed at making electricity the main energy source for rail transports. Use of electricity, instead of diesel fuel, to power locomotives has been continually increased, and electricity now provides 80% of all railway traction power. Railways' power stations for generation of traction current are allocated to the stationary component of the energy sector (1.A.1.a) and are not included in the further description that follows here. In energy input for trains of German railways, diesel fuel is the only energy source that plays a significant role apart from electric power.

Basically, total inland deliveries of diesel oil are available from the National Energy Balances (NEBs) (AGEB, 2019) ¹⁾. This data is based upon sales data of the Association of the German Petroleum Industry (MWV) ²⁾. As a recent revision of MWV data on diesel oil sales for the years 2005 to 2009 has not yet been adopted to the respective NEBs, this original MWV data has been used for this five years.

Data on the consumption of biodiesel in railways is provided in the NEBs as well, from 2004 onward. But as the NEBs do not provide a solid time series regarding most recent years, the data used for the inventory is estimated based on the prescribed shares of biodiesel to be added to diesel oil.

Small quantities of solid fuels are used for historical steam engines vehicles operated mostly for tourism and exhibition purposes. Official fuel delivery data are available for lignite, through 2002, and for hard coal, through 2000, from the NEBs. In order to complete these time series, a study was carried out in 2012 by Hedel, R., and Kunze, J. (2012) ³⁾. During this study, questionaires were provided to any known operator of historical steam engines in Germany. Here, due to limited data archiving, nearly complete data could only be gained for years as of 2005. For earlier years, in order to achieve a solid time series, conservative gap filling was applied. A follow-up study to gain original cosumption data for 2015 was carried out in 2016 by Illichmann, S. (2016) ⁴⁾.

Table 1: Overview of activity-data sources for domestic fuel sales to railway operators

Table 2: Annual fuel consumption in German railways, in terajoules

The EF provided in ⁵⁾ represent summatory values for (i) the fuel's and (ii) the lubricant's heavy-metal content as well as (iii) engine wear. Here, there might be no heavy metals contained in the biofuels. But since the specific shares of (i), (ii) and (iii) cannot be separated, and since the contributions of lubricant and engine wear might be dominant, the same emission factors are applied to biodiesel.

bibliography : 1 : AGEB (2019): Working Group on Energy Balances (Arbeitsgemeinschaft Energiebilanzen (Hrsg.), AGEB): Energiebilanz für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland; URL: https://ag-energiebilanzen.de/7-0-Bilanzen-1990-2017.html, Köln & Berlin, 2019. : 2 : MWV (2019): Association of the German Petroleum Industry (Mineralölwirtschaftsverband, MWV): Annual Report 2018, page 65, Table 'Sektoraler Verbrauch von Dieselkraftstoff 2012-2016'; URL: https://www.mwv.de/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/180830_MWV_Jahresbericht-2018_RZ_Web_es_small.pdf, Berlin, 2019. : 3 : Hedel, R., & Kunze, J. (2012): Recherche des jährlichen Kohleeinsatzes in historischen Schienenfahrzeugen seit 1990. Probst & Consorten Marketing-Beratung. Dresden, 2012. : 4 : Illichmann, S. (2016): Recherche des Festbrennstoffeinsatzes historischer Schienenfahrzeuge in Deutschland 2015, Probst & Consorten Marketing-Beratung. Study carried out for UBA; FKZ 363 01 392; not yet published; Dresden, 2016. : 5 : Knörr et al. (2019a): Knörr, W., Heidt, C., Gores, S., & Bergk, F.: ifeu Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (Institut für Energie- und Umweltforschung Heidelberg gGmbH, ifeu): Fortschreibung des Daten- und Rechenmodells: Energieverbrauch und Schadstoffemissionen des motorisierten Verkehrs in Deutschland 1960-2035, sowie TREMOD 5.81, im Auftrag des Umweltbundesamtes, Heidelberg & Berlin, 2019. : 6 : EMEP/EEA (2019): EMEP/EEA air pollutant emission inventory guidebook 2019, https://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/emep-eea-guidebook-2019/part-b-sectoral-guidance-chapters/1-energy/1-a-combustion/1-a-3-c-railways/view; Copenhagen, 2019. : 7 : Rentz et al. (2008): Nationaler Durchführungsplan unter dem Stockholmer Abkommen zu persistenten organischen Schadstoffen (POPs), im Auftrag des Umweltbundesamtes, FKZ 205 67 444, UBA Texte | 01/2008, January 2008 - URL: http://www.umweltbundesamt.de/en/publikationen/nationaler-durchfuehrungsplan-unter-stockholmer : 7 : Knörr et al. (2009): Knörr, W., Heldstab, J., & Kasser, F.: Ermittlung der Unsicherheiten der mit den Modellen TREMOD und TREMOD-MM berechneten Luftschadstoffemissionen des landgebundenen Verkehrs in Deutschland; final report; URL: https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/sites/default/files/medien/461/publikationen/3937.pdf, FKZ 360 16 023, Heidelberg & Zürich, 2009. bibliography