By the end of the year, India’s main rail network—around 40,000 miles long—could be 100% electrified. It’s more than 96% electrified now. In the U.S., by contrast, that number is around 1%.
“India has been such an amazing example of a rapid transition of a diesel rail system to an electric rail system,” says Yasmine Agelidis, senior attorney at Earthjustice, an environmental nonprofit advocating for the U.S. to move to zero-emissions trains. “It’s a great model for the U.S. to look at because India had a lot of diesel rail already, and the U.S. is in a similar boat.”
India’s net-zero goal
Indian Railways, the government-owned company that runs the rail network, has a goal to get to net-zero emissions by the end of the decade. But the motivation to phase out diesel trains isn’t solely to address climate change and reduce the health impacts from pollution. Electric trains are less expensive to operate. The trains can also carry more freight or haul more passenger cars than diesel locomotives. And the switch reduces the country’s dependence on imported crude oil.
To electrify the track, wires are added overhead that can connect with electric trains. The progress doesn’t mean that every train in use is now electric, but that part is moving quickly too—as of December 2023, Indian Railways operated more than 10,000 electric trains, out of around 14,500 in total. (In some cases, old diesel trains were converted to electric, but most are new; an order last year for 1,300 new electric locomotives was the largest that Siemens Mobility, its supplier, had ever received.)
How India moved so quickly
More than 12,000 miles of track were electrified in India between 2011 and 2020, and another 12,000 miles were electrified from 2020 to 2023. Support came from the top. “India’s prime minister set a really clear directive that he wanted India to get to 100% electric rail,” Agelidis says. “I think that clear guidance and policy goal was really valuable.”
The fact that the railway is government-owned helped speed up the process. The government fast-tracked permits for land, transmission access for electricity, and construction, according to Pawan Mulukutla, who leads transportation work at the nonprofit WRI India. Budgets were allocated to upgrade existing rail infrastructure rather than expand the network.
Other countries are also moving faster than the U.S. to adopt electric trains. China’s rail network is 75% electrified; South Korea is at 78%. The EU is 56% electrified. Switzerland’s rail network made the switch in the early part of the 20th century and is virtually 100% electrified now.
In the U.S., where the majority of rail is privately owned, there has been less interest in investing in electric infrastructure. “Over time, electric rail can actually be cheaper than diesel because it’s a much cheaper fuel source,” Agelidis says. “It’s a huge job creator as well. But I think given [the private railways] model, they’re just looking at the short term and what they can give their shareholders. That’s really a problem, because it means that shareholder profits are being put ahead of public health and our climate goals.”
California’s push to electrify rail
In California, a new zero-emissions rail rule is designed to force railways operating in the state to make the switch. By 2030, all new locomotives in the state will have to be zero-emissions models; trains older than 23 years will no longer be able to operate unless they’re retrofitted. By 2042, 50% of rail in California will have to be zero-emissions, and by 2047, 100%.
That’s still, of course, far slower than India’s transition. But it’s a start. The state is waiting for the Environmental Protection Agency to approve the rule, because it’s part of a waiver that California was granted to keep regulating its air pollution when the U.S. enacted the Clean Air Act in 1970. If the new rule moves forward, other states with high levels of air pollution could also adopt it.
