Outstanding Energy Efficiency at Rail Cargo Hungaria

Rail Cargo Hungaria (RCH) has achieved outstanding energy efficiency: last year, the company's locomotives consumed more than 90 million kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity on the rail network of MÁV Hungarian Railways , with more than 11% of the energy used being fed back into the network by using braking energy, thus saving enough electricity to meet the annual average consumption of around 4,000 families in 2024, the railway company told MTI on Tuesday.

The statement stressed that Rail Cargo Hungaria is increasing its competitiveness by continuously improving the efficiency of the energy used for its operations. The energy consumption of locomotives for traction accounts for 98% of the energy needs of freight railway companies.

Even the smallest savings achieved in this area can be measured in hundreds of millions of forints and in terms of protecting the human environment.

It was also reported that, according to the latest statement by the Hungarian state railway company MÁV Plc., the exclusive distributor of traction energy on the railway infrastructure, RCH has almost doubled the proportion of energy fed back into the network by its traction vehicles and increased the proportion of green energy used by 14% in the last seven years.

They pointed out that, according to the latest statement by MÁV, RCH's carbon dioxide savings are nine times higher than the average savings of railways operating in Hungary, thanks to the use of energy-efficient electric traction locomotives.

If the volume of freight transported by RCH in 2024 had to be delivered by trucks to its destinations, it would have added 187,394 tons of carbon dioxide to the environment. This amount of greenhouse gases could be absorbed by a contiguous oak forest 750,000 square kilometers in size, i.e. three times the size of the entire area of a town the size of Cegléd, Rail Cargo Hungaria Plc. said in a statement.