Traction energy used by locomotives accounts for 98% of the energy demand of rail freight companies. The smallest savings achieved in this area can be measured in hundreds of millions of forints and in protecting the human environment, which cannot be expressed in monetary terms.
According to the latest report by MÁV Zrt (MÁV), the exclusive distributor of traction energy on Hungarian rail infrastructure, in the last seven years, RCH could almost double the proportion of energy fed back into the network from its traction vehicles and could increase the green energy used by 14%. Based on these figures, the company performs twice as well as all railway companies operating in Hungary.
In 2024, the locomotives operated by RCH consumed over 90 million kWh of electricity during their operation on the network of MÁV, but over 11% of the energy consumed was fed back into the network through the braking energy. Last year, the locomotives of the company saved enough electricity to cover the average annual consumption of app. 4,000 families. With these figures, the company is performing twice better than any other railway company operating in Hungary.
According to recent statistics by MÁV, by using efficient electric locomotives, RCH was able to save nine times more CO2 emissions in Hungary than all railway companies operating in Hungary.
In the spirit of sustainability and energy efficiency, RCH strives to use less energy for its activities, therefore the company focuses in its training programs also on teaching its locomotive drivers how to cut energy consumption by up to 40% by taking into account track geometry, slow signals and other factors.
If the volume transported by RCH in 2024 would have been delivered by trucks to the destinations, it would have polluted the environment with 187 394 tonnes of CO2. This amount of greenhouse gases could be sequestered by a contiguous oak forest of 50,000 square kilometres in size, i.e. over three times of the size of the entire area of Cegléd.