In view of soaring energy prices and the increasing insecurity of energy supply, UIC invited its members to join a focused and collective effort to seek and share effective ways to save energy and costs on the railways.
The kick-off meeting of the UIC Energy Saving Task Force was attended remotely on 24 November 2022 by around 50 participants from all across Europe, as well as China and Japan.
Christian Chavanel, UIC Director of the Rail System Department, and Lucie Anderton, Head of the UIC Sustainability Platform, warmly welcomed participants and facilitated a discussion on the needs of members. Together the group set the mission statement to “provide a platform for collaborative knowledge sharing on techniques to save energy (electrical and all other fuels) and costs for railway operations”.
The group aims to:
- Share and learn current effective techniques already in use;
- Establish short-term ‘quick wins’;
- Generate ideas for new collaborative projects or existing projects that need to be accelerated;
- Collect and compile a library of information and documents;
- Produce documented concrete measures and guidelines;
- Expand and strengthen the network – linking to other partners working on this agenda; and
- Establish a way forward after the task force.
Alain Scherrer, Head of the Rolling Stock Department, presented the main UIC projects from the energy and rolling stock sector, i.e. the “Reversible substation”, “Methods of energy storage for railway systems” and “Improving the management of the HVAC systems on the trains” projects.
Philippe Stefanos, Senior Advisor at the Sustainability Platform, presented several recent publications, including “Traction Energy Settlement and Data Exchange” (IRS 90930), “Sustainability reporting for rail” (update of UIC Leaflet 330) and “Data exchange with Driver Advisory Systems (DAS) following the SFERA protocol” (IRS 90940).
David Fogelberg and Astrid Parkenings presented the SNCF energy sobriety plan, while Claudio Spalvieri and Massimo Centra presented the RFI energy consumption and saving plans.
Members are encouraged to present their energy plans during the upcoming online meetings. IP, FS Trenitalia and BaneNor will be presenting at the next Energy Saving Task Force online meeting, scheduled to take place on Friday 9 December 2022 from 1 to 3 pm CET.
The task force will come together on 1 March 2023 in person in Paris for a workshop as part of the UIC Sustainability Action Week, and members and partners are invited to save the date in their diary.
If you wish to participate in the task force, please fill in the form and/or share this with any of your contacts who can help towards this collective effort:
https://uic.org/events/registration-to-the-uic-energy-saving-task-force
A Task Force LinkedIn group is open to members. Please feel free to join the group and share information: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/12735294/.
