The role of high-speed rail in mitigating climate change – The Swedish case Europabanan from a life cycle perspective

Abstract

In this paper a life cycle perspective is used to analyse Europabanan, a proposed high-speed rail track in Sweden. The life cycle emissions reductions are found to be 550,000 tons of CO 2-equivalents per annum by 2025/2030 with almost 60% of this coming from a shift from truck to rail freight and 40% from a shift from air and road travel to high-speed rail travel. In contexts similar to Sweden, it is thus an important issue whether a large increase is required in freight rail capacity anyway, since high-speed rail investments may not be justified for the passenger markets alone. The study also indicates that a substantial share of emissions due to construction of the new railway could be counterbalanced through the reduced need for building and maintaining roads and airports, and for manufacturing cars.