Pollution by electric vs non electric trains. Rail has an important role to play in achieving a more sustainable transport system and reducing transport’s contribution to climate change. However, while transport policy makes a general reference to rail transport in terms of being relatively ‘green’, there are many different types of ‘green’, many different types of rail and different operating conditions that determine how ‘green’ or ‘climate friendly’ rail really is. The European Green Deal features plans to double high-speed rail by 2030 and triple it by 2050. At the moment, 75% of freight is moved by road, so movement of goods by rail is set to double by 2050 https://perma.cc/N2DX-ZCSZ Shifting passengers from road and air transport to rail transport is a necessity to achieve the EU climate targets in time. As rail is the most energy efficient mode of passenger transport, if more people were to travel by train (rather than more polluting modes) then the CO2 emissions from the transport sector would be reduced. On average in Europe, rail emits 33g CO2eq per passenger-km (5 to 6 times less than air travel). On some journeys the difference is bigger, for example, between Paris and Barcelona, rail travel emits close to 100 times less CO2eq than travelling by air https://perma.cc/J7UY-D8UA Europe is trying to ditch planes for trains. Here’s how that’s going https://perma.cc/5VUB-BZCS France isn’t the first European country to take a tougher line on super short-haul flights. The real cost of travel https://perma.cc/L95N-4372 Learn more about CO2 pollution by train / planes https://t.center/ElonMuskPollution https://t.center/PollutionFacts https://t.center/NatureFreaksDeutsch/659 https://t.center/NatureFreaksDeutsch/672 https://t.center/NatureFreaksDeutsch/649 etc.