By Esmira Aliyeva
Published on
Despite being the cleanest and most sustainable form of transport, the railway sector in Azerbaijan is now pursuing further decarbonisation.
To lower carbon emissions and support the green agenda, the national state-owned rail transport operator, Azerbaijan Railways (ADY), together with the Asian Development Bank (ADB), presented in Baku a decarbonisation project on Friday.
This new initiative will accelerate the country’s transition to a modern and competitive rail system and increase the benefits along international transport corridors.
Azerbaijan Railways Decarbonisation Project paves the way towards a carbon-neutral railway system.
This is crucial for meeting national and global climate targets, especially under the Paris Agreement, signed by over 190 countries, including Azerbaijan – a document, committing to limit global warming and pursue net-zero pathways.
Azerbaijan has set an ambitious national target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 35% by 2030 and 40% by 2050.
Collaboration towards a green railway transition in Azerbaijan has already shown some results. “It just started a year ago and has really quickly developed into something that is tangible,” Cindy Cisneros-Tiangco, the director of Emerging Areas in the Asian Development Bank (ADB) Energy Sector told Euronews.
This cooperation aligns with a country’s green agenda and, in the foreseeable future, will lead to not only domestic, but also regional logistics transformation.
Over the past year alone, ADY’s natural gas consumption has decreased by 50%, 63% of the railway network has been electrified, and more than 80% of freight transportation has been carried out using electric locomotives.
ADB funding is helping accelerate and support these outcomes. Within the project, the Asian Development Bank has allocated $1.25 million (€1.07 million) in technical assistance, which will strengthen its capacity in waste monitoring and reporting, enhance energy efficiency, expand electrification, and reduce emissions across the railway infrastructure.
“As Azerbaijan develops into a strategic transit center at the intersection of East-West and North-South transport routes, the importance of the project is especially significant”, noted ADY Chairman Rovshan Rustamov during the presentation in Baku.
Increasing freight on two major international transport routes – the Middle Corridor, linking China and East Asia to Europe, and North-South, connecting India and the Persian Gulf to Russia and northern Europe, strengthening the rail system in terms of efficiency, reliability and environmental responsibility.
Rustamov believes that decarbonisation will only increase these opportunities.
“There were a lot of opportunities for us to coordinate across ministries, across other relevant players here in the transport as well as the energy sector, because this essentially is an integrated solution between transport and energy,” said Cisneros-Tiangco.
“So that’s what we want to focus on and emphasise. Everyone agreed that it’s logical for us to work together,” she concluded.