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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, 2022) 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, studies were carried out in 2012 ³⁾, 2016 ⁴⁾ and 2021 ⁵⁾. During these studies, 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.

Table 1: Annual activity data

Table 2: Annual emission factors

Table 3: Outcome of Key Category Analysis

or:

Table 4: Revised activity data

Table 5: Revised emission factors