ÖBB makes an enormous contribution to the protection of the climate

In the year 2005, our passengers in Austria traveled an impressive 8,470 million kilometers by rail. In doing so around 55,000 tons of CO2 were released. If our customers had driven the same amount of kilometers with the car, they would have caused 1,279,000 tons of CO2.

Thus Austria’s railway passengers avoided an impressive 1,224,000 tons of CO2 in the year 2005.

The main factor for the good CO2 balance of ÖBB lies in the energy source: 86 percent, or a large amount of our energy needs, are won through hydropower. Only around 14 percent comes from caloric power plants. In comparison to the energy balance of the Deutsche Bahn and the Schweizer Bundesbahnen, the ÖBB performs best in view of sustainability.

The Deutsche Bahn covers 64 percent of its energy consumption with electricity from fossil fuels, 24 percent of the energy comes from atomic power plants and twelve percent with electricity from renewable energy sources. In Switzerland 40 percent of the energy needs of the railway comes from electricity from atomic power plants.

Configuration of the electricity used by the ÖBB:
14 percent electricity from caloric power plants
86 percent electricity from hydropower (58 percent own production)