Railfreight Energy & Emissions Calculator (REEC)

UK 2050 net carbon-neutral and DfT 2040 "no diesel-only" targets are challenging for the rail industry. The issue is more acute for Freight Operating Companies (FOCs) where a legacy fleet of mostly diesel locomotives will be operational for the next two decades and amplified by only 44% of the GB network being electrified. FOCs are actively pursuing ways to decarbonise and clean up diesel trains. However, a detailed energy and emissions profile calculator, performing on-the-fly computation for any path, that can evaluate efficiency improvements and mitigation measures is simply not available today.

We propose to develop a novel Railfreight Energy & Emissions Calculator (REEC) that will be deployed on the existing NR+ platform used for railfreight planning. The NR+ platform is the first digital platform that fully describes the UK rail network capability. It will be augmented with gradient and line speed data together with train performance and OTMR data to deliver a low-cost intelligent emissions calculation and mapping solution. The net accelerative/decelerative force on a train (based on resistive forces, track gradient, available tractive effort or brake force, train speed and mass) can be computed to determine how the train speed changes over time, the power that is required to be applied to meet the force balance and the time taken to traverse a section of track. Hence the energy usage and emissions for a discrete track segment can be derived using the same approach in the recently completed RSSB T1187 project which developed emission factors by notch (in units of g/kWh). The resulting emissions computations are much more precise than using simplistic g/km emission factors.

Railfreight customers and FOCs will be able to look-up the precise emissions for their routes and determine the effects on modal shift. Network Rail can use REEC to analyse the impact of delivering more efficient electrification strategies for freight trains. By including energy and emissions in freight bids, NR planners can start incorporating emissions optimisation in timetabling and make informed decisions on the impact of the emissions of delayed and longer freight trains.

The lead organisation, University of Hull (UoH), has successfully developed the NR+ platform and demonstrated its ability to combine big data and analytics to deliver scalable rail applications. UoH will be supported by consultants from Aether, Carrickarory, and by an expert in emissions computation from the University of Derby.