The regional public enterprise Metro de Madrid has managed to reduce its electricity consumption by 25% in recent years thanks to its savings and energy efficiency plans. The Councillor for Transport, Mobility and Infrastructure of the Regional Government of Madrid and Chairman of Metro de Madrid, Ángel Garrido, highlighted today the environmental sustainability of the Madrid underground – one of the most efficient subways in the world – with energy consumption that is 50% below the average of other large metropolitan systems.

At the plenary session of the Regional Assembly of Madrid, Ángel Garrido committed to turning Metro de Madrid into the backbone of sustainable mobility in the region. “Metro de Madrid is the least polluting and the most used means of transport in the Region of Madrid, which in itself means that it directly contributes to sustainability by reducing the number of vehicles on the roads”, he remarked.

“But this contribution is not enough in itself, because 90% of the emissions of Metro de Madrid come from electricity consumption”, added the regional councillor. Hence, to control and reduce the use of energy in the operation of the transport network, the Madrid public enterprise has implemented energy efficiency measures that are contained in two plans: the Energy Saving Plan 2012-2017; and it successor – the Energy Efficiency Plan – which is currently in force.

“Thanks to these two plans, Metro de Madrid has managed to reduce its electricity consumption by 25% in daily operations compared with consumption in the past”, he explained. Specifically, this consumption has gone from 750 gigawatt hours (GWh) in 2011 to 562 GWh in 2018. In fact, in just three years, the Energy Efficiency Plan has led to a saving for Metro de Madrid that is equivalent to the consumption in more than 110,000 homes over the course of a year.

Furthermore, last year, 36% of the high voltage energy used to power trains came from renewable sources. This percentage rises to 100% for low voltage energy, which is used for the rest of Metro’s activities, such as the supply and lighting of stations and other facilities.

The regional councillor quoted, by way of a specific example of the savings measures implemented, the new smart transmission technique applied by Metro de Madrid which allows energy consumption to be optimised by maintaining trains at a constant speed. Accordingly, consumption amounts to 1.3 kilowatt hours (kWh) per kilometre of travel, compared with the average of the large metropolitan systems in the world, which stands at above 2.6kWh. “This new technique has converted Metro de Madrid into one of the most efficient networks in the world from an energy perspective”, stated Ángel Garrido.

Similarly, the Madrid underground is the first metropolitan transport network with LED technology in all its stations. As many as 210,000 lightbulbs have been replaced on trains and in stations.

ENERGY RECOVERY

Another of the energy efficiency measures is the Reversible Cell Plan which, with an investment of 1.2 million euros, allows energy to be recovered from the braking of trains to power other facilities in the network, such as lifts, escalators and turnstiles. This provides an average saving equivalent to the annual energy consumption of some 200 homes.

Ángel Garrido added that, together with these energy saving measures, Metro is also implementing other actions for appropriate environmental management, from a larger fleet of electric vehicles, new parking areas for bicycles at its facilities, lower consumption of paper and the consumption of recycled water to clean trains.

“All these initiatives are designed to minimise the company’s environmental impact and to continue making Metro de Madrid one of the finest underground systems in the world”, concluded the regional councillor.