HVO fuel and a future hydrogen combustion engine will both play a role in reducing rail emissions. “We can replace old vehicles with new sustainable trains, however we also need to do something to reduce the carbon footprint of existing vehicles running on diesel”, said Sittipan Reinold, Program Lead Diesel Exit Rail at Deutsche Bahn during the latest RailTech webinar on reducing rail emissions and shifting to alternatives for diesel.
Reducing current emissions for existing diesel trains is at the core of DB’s Diesel Exit programme, which was launched this year. “As DB forwarded its climate neutrality goal from 2050 to 2040, this means it’s only 18 years left, which in terms of railway innovation cycles is a very short time”, says Sittipan Reinold.
One of the ways DB wants to reduce the emissions of operations, is by switching to HVO fuel, which stands for Hydro-treated Vegetable Oil. “HVO is a biofuel made out of waste and residual and components raw materials. Because it does not have a fossil origin, and green electricity is used for the production, the CO2 emissions of the HVO fuel we buy are 90 percent lower than for diesel, and has certificates to guarantee it is the greenest HVO and is palm oil-free.”
The main advantage of HVO as a biofuel is that it is a ‘drop-in fuel’. “You can take out diesel from the vehicle and put in HVO and the train is running, there is no need to adopt anything on the train.” DB tested it first in its Advanced TrainLab, and started in January with the implementation of the fuel in its operations. Since July 2022, the shuttle trains which carry passenger cars to the northern Germany island Sylt run completely on HVO, which are around 10 vehicles. They are fuelled by a converted filling station. A regional fleet in Baden-Württemberg also runs on HVO since recently.
Freight subsidiary DB Cargo took a big step in approving all their diesel engines in Germany for the use of HVO. “Every DB Cargo vehicle is now ready to use HVO, and the question is only: how fast can we convert refilling stations?” There are currently just three refilling stations for HVO in Germany, but more are coming.