European trains go down renewable route
Electric trains in the Netherlands have relied entirely on renewable energy since 1 January, and now the UK and Belgium are following in their tracks.
Renewable energy is helping to power increasing numbers of the world’s road vehicles. Now several European countries are exploring the potential for using renewables to fuel their trains. In the Netherlands, every electric train running on the Dutch railway network has relied entirely on wind energy since 1 January. The network, NS Dutch Railways, is using an energy company’s turbines to generate the energy needed to power its entire electric fleet.
NS uses 1.2bn kWh of wind-generated electricity a year, roughly equivalent to the total annual domestic consumption of every household in the Dutch city of Amsterdam. The wind-powered trains carry 600,000 passengers a day.
NS says three strokes of one of the turbines that supply it generate enough power to drive a train for 1km. Put another way, a single turbine running for an hour can power a train for 120 miles. Since 2005, NS says, its consumption of electricity per passenger kilometre has been cut by about 30%, and it hopes to reduce it by a further 35% by 2020.
(Photo: Maurits90 via Wikimedia Commons, CC-license)
