A WAP-7 locomotive of the Indian Railways (Pramath S B/Wikimedia Commons)The Ministry of Railways has planned to electrify balance Broad Gauge (BG) Routes of Indian Railways by December 2023, an official statement said on Friday (13 March).
According to Railways’ plan, 6,000 km of BG routes will be electrified in 2020-21 while electrification of another 6,000 km of tracks will be completed in 2021-22. For the financial year 2022-23, 6,500 km of routes will be electrified. The electrification of the remaining 4,310 km of tracks will be completed by December 2023.
The information was given by Union Railways Minister Piyush Goyal in a written reply to a question in Rajya Sabha on Friday.
In reply to a query on whether Railways was considering to become a zero-emission network, Goyal said, “Initially, Indian Railways (IR) has planned to source about 1000 Mega Watt (MW) Solar Power as part of its Solar Mission and about 200 MW of wind power based on techno-commercial assessment. Out of this, about 204.82 MW (101.42 MW solar and 103.4MW wind power) renewable power has already been set up,”
In addition to the above, to further reduce the fuel burden of Indian Railways, it has been endeavored to install land-based solar plants across India on unutilized railway land for meeting its energy needs for both traction and non-traction purpose, he added.
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