The International Energy Agency (IEA) and the International Union of Railways (UIC) have officially launched the new edition of the IEA-UIC Railway Handbook on Energy Consumption & CO2 Emissions. The 2016 publication marks the fifth year of cooperation between the two organisations and provides a wealth of practical information on the rail sector. This year, it takes a special look at the landmark Paris Agreement, signed at the UNFCCC Conference of Parties (COP21) in December 2015, where more than 190 countries pledged to take steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The 2016 edition highlights the rail sector’s decisive role in meeting global climate and economic challenges, and shows that the rail sector is on track to meet the UIC’s low-carbon targets. This year’s special focus on sustainability targets underscores that rail transportation offers a more sustainable alternative to most other transport modes, both in terms of energy use and carbon emissions per passenger-kilometre or tonne-kilometre, and should continue to do so over the coming decades.

The Handbook also contains more detailed and accurate energy data from railways around the world. In addition to information from European railways, it provides improved data from Russia, Japan, the United States, China, India and South Korea, among others.

As in previous editions, the Handbook’s Part I presents the most significant data and trends on energy consumption and CO2 emissions from the rail sector, focusing on the most relevant regions for rail activity – the European Union, the United States, Japan, Russia, India and China. These accounted for 89% of passenger-kilometres and 84% of tonne-kilometres travelled globally in 2013. The section also provides regional and global statistics on rail-related CO2emissions, passenger activities, freight activities, and electrification.

The section pays particular attention to the growing role of high-speed rail, including its global coverage (in operation, in construction, or being planning). High-speed rail infrastructure in 2013 was dominated by China, with 60% of global high-speed infrastructure, followed by Europe with a 24% share.

Part II of the Handbook offers an analysis of national and regional CO2 emissions targets and compares the rail sector to other modes of transportation. The IEA-UIC analysis shows that the rail sector is on track to achieve the UIC Low Carbon Rail Transport Challenge targets with regard to energy efficiency for 2030 and 2050, which will put the rail sector in line with the 2 Degree Scenario (2DS) outlined in the IEA’s Energy Technology Perspectives publication.

The Handbook also presents global targets that were set by the UIC in 2014, which were signed by UIC Members in 2015 through the UIC’s ‘Train To Paris’ campaign.

Part II also looks at national commitments to achieve the climate goals of the Paris Agreement. It provides an analysis of the Nationally Determined Contributions, which represent national pledges, and seeks to understand how countries include the transport sector and the rail sector in their pledges.

Some of the key facts of the 2016 Edition:

• The transport sector emitted 7.5 billion tonne CO2 in 2013. The share of CO2 emissions from transport has continuously increased since 2010 from 22.7% to 23.4% in 2013. In 2013, 3.5% of transport CO2 emissions were due to the rail sector, while railways transported 8% of the world’s passengers and goods.
• Global railway passenger activity grew by 133% between 1975 and 2013. China and India were the major contributors to this growth, with an eight-fold increase in railway activity, while EU28 activity grew by 10% in the same period. Freight activity has increased by 78% since 1975. USA, Russia and China are the top countries for freight transport on rail in terms of tonne-kilometers carried.
• The total length of high-speed lines in operation was more than 10 times higher in 2015 compared to 1990. China has taken the lead in high speed rail deployment and was hosting 60% of all high speed lines globally in 2015. Globally, high-speed passenger activity has almost doubled between 2000 and 2013.
• The rail sector accounted for 2% of the total energy used in the transport sector, in 2013. The rail sector was 57% fuelled by oil products and 36.4% by electricity.
• The share of electrified railway tracks has increased by 163% between 1975 and 2013 at world level. China and Korea increased their share of respectively 325% and 343% from 1990 to 2013.
• Coal consumption in rail has dramatically fallen between 1990 and 2013, and is nearly phased out. In the same period electricity use in rail has increased from 17.2% to 36.4%, including a significant rise in renewable electricity sources (from 3.4% to 8.7%).
• In 2013, the specific energy consumption of rail passenger transport was 138 kJ/pkm, while the specific energy consumption of rail freight transport was 129 kJ/tkm. The specific energy consumption of the railways decreased by 63% and 48% in passenger and freight services respectively, between 1975 and 2013. Specific CO2 emissions in the rail sector have been following a similar improvement rate: they dropped by 60% in passenger services and by 38% in freight services between 1975 and 2013.
• The rates of improvement of rail energy and CO2 intensity were in line with UIC’s 2030 and 2050 targets in 2013 (latest collected data): specific energy consumption has reduced by 37% between 1990 and 2013, and specific CO2emissions have reduced by 30% in the same period, according to the IEA Mobility Model, integrating energy consumption data of UIC members covering over 90% of total rail activity.
• The monitoring of CO2 emissions carried out by the UIC ESRS (Environmental Strategy Reporting System) highlights the performance of European railways in line with the UIC-CER targets for 2020, 2030 and 2050 at European level. From the perspective of the market-based approach, railways have already achieved the 2020 target for specific CO2 emissions reduction. The target for total CO2 emissions reduction was already achieved in 2006 considering both the location-based and market-based approaches.
• European railways have already achieved the EU Climate Package target of using 20% renewable energy in 2011 by 2020. Electrification and green procurement played a key role in achieving this target.
• Railways are more energy and CO2 efficient per traffic unit than competitor transport modes. According to IPCC analysis and projections, railways will likely remain among the most sustainable transport modes until at least 2030.
• The Energy Technology Perspectives 2016 publication (IEA, 2016) suggests that an increase in the share of high-speed rail in total transport activity is required to achieve the “2 Degree Scenario” (2DS), as this would reduce the average carbon intensity of long distance passenger transport.
• In the context of the COP21 event held in Paris in 2015, 75% of the world’s countries have established strategies and targets to improve the environmental performance of their transport sector within their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs). One-fifth of the transport-related (I)NDCs include measures in the railway sector.

Production of the Railway Handbook 2016 has strengthened the ongoing collaboration between the IEA and the UIC. This relationship has served to enrich and improve the knowledge of activity, energy and emissions data associated with the railway sector. The information presented this year was made possible thanks to the direct data collection from railways covering over 90% of the global rail transport activity, which was incorporated in the IEA Mobility Model.

The IEA-UIC Railway Handbook on Energy Consumption & CO2 Emissions 2016 Edition is available here.

The leaders of four major global cities say they will stop the use of all diesel-powered cars and trucks by the middle of the next decade.

The mayors of Paris, Mexico City, Madrid and Athens say they are implementing the ban to improve air quality.

They say they will give incentives for alternative vehicle use and promote walking and cycling.

The commitments were made in Mexico at the biennial C40 meeting of urban leaders in Mexico.

The use of diesel in transport has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years, as concerns about its impact on air quality have grown. The World Health Organisation (WHO) says that around three million deaths every year are linked to exposure to outdoor air pollution.

Diesel engines contribute to the problem in two key ways – through the production of particulate matter (PM) and nitrogen oxides (NOx). Very fine soot PM can penetrate the lungs and can contribute to cardiovascular illness and death.

Nitrogen oxides can help form ground level ozone and this can exacerbate breathing difficulties, even for people without a history of respiratory problems.

As the evidence has mounted, environmental groups have used the courts to try and enforce clear air standards and regulations. In the UK, campaigners have recently had success in forcing the government to act more quickly.

Now, mayors from a number of major cities with well known air quality problems have decided to use their authority to clamp down on the use of diesel.

In the UK, campaigners are calling for London’s mayor to commit to phase out diesel vehicles from London by 2025.

Sadiq Khan has proposed an expansion to the planned Ultra-Low Emission Zone in central London.

ClientEarth lawyer Alan Andrews said: “In the UK, London’s mayor is considering bolder action than his predecessor, proposing an expansion to the planned Ultra-Low Emission Zone. This is welcome but we want him to go further and faster.

“And it’s not just London that has this problem; we need a national network of clean air zones so that the problem is not simply pushed elsewhere.”

By Matt McGrath (BBC)

Call it the opening shot in a brewing war over scientific integrity in the future Trump administration.

More than 2,300 scientists, including 22 Nobel Prize winners, have issued an open letter to President-elect Donald Trump and the 115th Congress, urging them to “adhere to high standards of scientific integrity and independence in responding to current and emerging public health and environmental health threats.”

The letter underscores the extent to which many scientists, who have worked with the Obama administration to address climate change, pandemics and other major policy issues, are worried about whether Trump and his deputies will slash science funding and overhaul the way several federal agencies operate. While it does not directly refer to President George W. Bush’s eight years in office, many of the signatories spent years fighting the curbs imposed on federal scientists during that time.

Andrew Rosenberg, who directs the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Centre for Science and Democracy and whose group organised the letter, said he and other scientists have become concerned both by comments Trump made over the course of the campaign and some of the people who have been advising him on energy, the environment and public health.

“We need to make sure there’s not political manipulation of the science,” Rosenberg said, adding that part of the challenge he and others face is there is not an obvious point person on the transition team who is communicating with outside constituency groups. “It’s hard to figure out even who to have a conversation with. There doesn’t seem to be much of an opening.”

The list of distinguished signatories, who hail from all 50 states, includes medical scientists, physicists and many climate researchers. The Nobel laureates include Harold Varmus, who headed the National Cancre Institute under President Obama; David Baltimore, the former president of Caltech; and Mario Molina, who helped discover the role of chlorofluorocarbons in depleting the ozone layer. James Hansen, the longtime NASA researcher who had previously denounced George W. Bush’s administration for interfering with his ability to communicate publicly the science of climate change, also signed the letter.

The scientists represent a broad range of disciplines: At least 440 in biology, 350 in ecology, 180 in environmental science, 171 in earth science, 108 in chemistry and 40 in agriculture signed the letter.

In the past, Trump has questioned the connection between human activity and climate change, suggesting that he would seek to withdraw from the accord forged last year in Paris that aims to cut the world’s carbon output over the next decade. In a New York Times interview this month, however, the president-elect said, “I have an open mind to it” and said protecting air quality and “crystal clear” water was crucial.

Several of the men and women who are either advising Trump or are being considered for administration posts have questioned the current trajectory of federal scientific research. In an interview last week with the Guardian, former congressman Robert Walker (R-Pa.) said NASA’s Earth Science division should be defunded because it engages in “politically correct environmental monitoring” and the agency should focus on space instead.

“We see NASA in an exploration role, in deep space research,” Walker said. “Earth-centric science is better placed at other agencies where it is their prime mission.”

Kathleen Hartnett-White, who used to chair the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and met this week with Trump at his transition headquarters in New York City, said in an interview with The Washington Post in October that she did not consider carbon dioxide a pollutant under the Clean Air Act because it does not pose a threat to public health.

“Carbon dioxide has none of the characteristics of a pollutant that could harm human health,” she said, adding at another point that when it comes to scientific predictions that the world could be on the brink of disastrous climate change, “We’re not standing on a cliff from which we are about to fall off.”

“I think all scientists are extremely concerned about what Trump might do to our scientific infrastructure,” said climate scientist Ken Caldeira, a researcher at the Carnegie Institution for Science who signed the letter. “It takes decades to build up leadership in a scientific area, because you have to train people for many years. It would be very easy in just a couple of years to destroy what has taken many decades to build up.”

Obama – who has repeatedly emphasised the need to adhere to fact-based decision making in recent months, often as he was campaigning against Trump during the election – made a point of highlighting that idea during an Oval Office meeting Wednesday with the American winners of this year’s Nobel Prizes.

Sitting with four of this year’s laureates – two in physics, one in economics and one in chemistry, the president said, “We are incredibly proud of them.”

“And I think it’s just a reminder that one of the things that makes America unique is our ability to attract talent from all around the world, to study at some of our greatest universities, and for us to have very practical, reasoned, fact-based empirical ways to figure out how we can make the world a slightly better place,” Obama added.

The letter released Wednesday echoes a previous one released by the Union of Concerned Scientists that was directed at Bush in 2004. The only difference is that at that time, the Bush administration had governed for some four years and had come under fire for multiple science-related scandals. Here, by contrast, scientists are seeking to prevent them by articulating the principle that government researchers should be able to follow the evidence where it leads, and should be free to communicate their results to the public.

“Twelve years ago, the Republican president was . . . very crude in the way they dealt with science,” said Lewis Branscomb, a physicist at the University of California at San Diego and another of the statement signatories. “They very often had political people in the government rewriting reports that scientists in the government had written. That sort of thing happened.”

“And now we’re looking at the kinds of people that Trump is appointing, and we have no good reason to be optimistic about what they’re going to do,” Branscomb said. “We don’t know of course, and we’re not saying they’re going to do anything wrong. We’re simply telling them what we think is going to be important, and hope that they pay attention when they select the senior people in the various agencies that are dealing in science.”

If not, the science community will be watching, the letter cautions.

“We will continue to champion efforts that strengthen the role of science in policymaking and stand ready to hold accountable any who might seek to undermine it,” it concludes.

By Juliet Eilperin and Chris Mooney (The Washington Post)

Germany in Berlin on Thursday December 1 2016 took over the presidency of the G20 leading economies, a platform Chancellor Angela Merkel wants to use to safeguard multilateral cooperation under threat following Donald Trump’s U.S. election victory.

The nation outlined its mission for 2017 under the overarching motto of “Shaping an Interconnected World”. Environmentalists have however urged a Germany-led G20 to mobilise action on climate change for a stronger and safer world.

In a swift reaction to the development, Climate Action Network (CAN), a global network of over 1,200 non-governmental organisations (NGOs), called on the German Presidency to use the G20 platform to mobilise international cooperation and action on climate change.

“Decisive action on climate change is vital to strengthening global stability, and for sustainable development, two pillars of the 2017 G20 agenda. The G20 countries account for approximately 80 percent of global emissions. They have a responsibility to lead on several actions to ensure that climate change does not further endanger global stability,” the CAN submitted in a statement issued on Thursday.

It adds that, by making climate-risk disclosure mandatory, the G20 can ensure that new investment in infrastructure is climate-resilient and low carbon. This, it notes, is vital to avoid the serious risk of stranded assets that threaten financial stability and economic growth.

CAN went further: “Inefficient fossil fuel subsidies skew markets in favour of energy sources that are not environmentally sustainable and which fail to deliver long-term energy security.
G20 governments must unlock the potential of renewable energy sources that are now cost-competitive in many parts of the world. They must further commit to halt fossil-fuel based development and infrastructure investments. Green finance will be an essential enabling element in the necessary global energy transition to 100% renewable energy.

“Mitigating and adapting to climate change will be key to global security, as the scale and frequency of extreme weather events threaten vulnerable communities and exacerbate the scarcity of natural resources.

“In 2015, all G20 governments adopted the Paris Agreement and the Agenda 2030 – the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). During COP 22 in Marrakech last month, 48 of the most vulnerable countries committed to transitioning to 100% renewable energy by 2050.
Now the world’s largest economies must ensure that their economic decisions are compatible with the commitments they made in Paris, and in line with the direction in which the global economy is moving.

“Developing mid-century strategies for sustainable development and decarbonisation is a key step in ensuring stable and resilient national economies. Such long-term planning will send clear signals to the private sector, and help build a framework for investments in line with development goals and those of the Paris Agreement.

“Germany, at the helm of the G20 must reaffirm commitments to avoid irreversible climate change. It must, through its G20 leadership, work to ensure a progressive outcome on global climate action.”

Members of CAN also individually reacted to the start of the German G20 Presidency.

Alex Doukas, Senior Campaigner, Oil Change International, said: “Climate science tells us that the responsible thing to do is to stop building new fossil fuel infrastructure now. Germany should push the G20 in this direction, and at the very least, should advance the 2009 G20 promise to end fossil fuel subsidies. We can’t afford to build new fossil fuel infrastructure, and we certainly can’t afford to waste even one more cent of public money on it.”

Wendel Trio, Director, Climate Action Network Europe: “As the G20 Presidency enters Europe for the next 12 months, Germany and the whole European Union should get behind an ambitious work plan that moves the world’s largest economies further away from fossil fuels and closer towards being fully renewables based and energy efficient. Germany together with the rest of the EU now have the opportunity to solidify their alleged climate leadership. This includes phasing out fossil fuel subsidies, increasing near-term climate action and getting down to business with the EU’s long-term decarbonisation strategy.”

Christoph Bals, Policy Director, Germanwatch: “As the world’s largest emitters and strongest economies, the G20 have a responsibility to act on climate change. The Paris Agreement has set a globally agreed framework for responding to the climate crisis, but we can only achieve the Paris objectives if the G20 now acts decisively on implementation. We welcome the emphasis the German presidency has announced to put on this issue. We expect chancellor Merkel to make it very clear that climate change has to be a priority, also vis-a-vis the incoming U.S. administration. All G20 countries need to agree to develop their mid-century decarbonisation plans by 2018.”