Electric freight transport in Germany insufficient
The transport of goods in Germany is often still carried out with climate-damaging diesel locomotives. This is to change in the future: Old diesel locomotives are to be replaced with more environmentally friendly ones.
In Germany, about 61 percent of the railway lines are electrified. This puts Germany above the EU average (54 percent), but far behind Switzerland (100 percent), Austria (70 percent) and Sweden (76 percent). The main beneficiaries of electrification are long-distance transport, 98 percent of which is electrified. The situation is quite different for local transport (64 percent) and freight transport (90 percent). This is mainly due to the fact that the branch lines that local traffic and freight traffic often use are not yet equipped with an overhead line. This is not least due to the high costs. Installing an overhead line costs between one and two million euros per kilometre, and even more can be expected for challenging terrain such as a mountainous landscape or densely populated areas. On the other hand, subsidies are granted more quickly for lines that carry many people and no goods.
The railway has now set itself the goal of using more hybrid locomotives. The advantage: a locomotive can be used on many routes if it can run on both diesel and electricity. Especially for shunting wagons and for short distances, the electric variant has an advantage, as starting up and accelerating consumes less time, money and energy. On the other hand, the acquisition of the dual-power locomotives could eliminate the need for dirty diesel locomotives, whose work would then be done by the new locomotives. At the moment, 900 diesel locomotives are still running on Germany's rails. The railway subsidiary DB Cargo has therefore ordered 400 hybrid locomotives from Siemens, which will be delivered from 2023. The remaining old diesel locomotives are to be gradually phased out over the next ten to 20 years.
That seems almost a little too long, because Germany's climate targets are ambitious: greenhouse gases are to be reduced by 55 percent by 2030. To achieve this goal and make rail transport climate-neutral by 2040, rail transport would have to be converted from diesel to electricity from overhead lines much more quickly. In addition, disused lines would have to be reactivated to bring more goods onto the railways and to get more people away from the car and onto the train. Only in this way can cities be freed from lorry traffic and the countless cars.