Indian Railways (IR) consumed over 17.5 billion kWh of electricity during 2013-14. This is about 4000 MW —almost 1.8% of India?s power generation capacity.

The Integral Coach Factory of IR had announced a project in association with the Indian Institute of Technology Madras to design coaches that will draw solar power for lighting and cooling. It now introduced a new coach of Rewari-Sitapur passenger train run by solar panels installed on its roof. This is a major development for Indian Railways to go green. Indian Railways plans 1 GW solar power capacity

Each coach needs about six thousand US Dollars to be equipped with solar panels. Evaluation of cost benefit is being done to know the economic viability. The solar panels generate about 17 units of power in a day which runs the lighting system in the coach. About a week ago, it announced promising results from its experiments on solar powered coaches.

Currently Railways will be installing solar panels on non air conditioned coaches only. According to the plan, railways proposes to install solar power plants of about 8.8 MW capacity at railway stations, railway office buildings and level crossing gates throughout the country.

Railway Minister has also emphasised on promotion of sustainable development and reducing dependence on fossil fuels. The generation of solar supply will help railways supply power at remote locations and saving in diesel due to reduced running of diesel generators.

With a huge network of Railway services, the investment required to go green is huge and will also bring in substantial savings on fossil fuel. In the earlier move by Indian Railways to allow passengers to bring an SMS/electronic version of their ticket instead of the paper tickets, they saved more than 1000 tonnes of paper every year.