India’s rail network is nearly 100% electrified. The U.S. is at 1%

India is pushing to get its trains to net zero by the end of the decade. It could be a model for the U.S.

By the end of the year, India’s main rail network—around 40,000 miles long—could be 100% electrified. It’s more than 96% electrified now. In the U.S., by contrast, that number is around 1%.

“India has been such an amazing example of a rapid transition of a diesel rail system to an electric rail system,” says Yasmine Agelidis, senior attorney at Earthjustice, an environmental nonprofit advocating for the U.S. to move to zero-emissions trains. “It’s a great model for the U.S. to look at because India had a lot of diesel rail already, and the U.S. is in a similar boat.”

India’s net-zero goal

Indian Railways, the government-owned company that runs the rail network, has a goal to get to net-zero emissions by the end of the decade. But the motivation to phase out diesel trains isn’t solely to address climate change and reduce the health impacts from pollution. Electric trains are less expensive to operate. The trains can also carry more freight or haul more passenger cars than diesel locomotives. And the switch reduces the country’s dependence on imported crude oil.

To electrify the track, wires are added overhead that can connect with electric trains. The progress doesn’t mean that every train in use is now electric, but that part is moving quickly too—as of December 2023, Indian Railways operated more than 10,000 electric trains, out of around 14,500 in total. (In some cases, old diesel trains were converted to electric, but most are new; an order last year for 1,300 new electric locomotives was the largest that Siemens Mobility, its supplier, had ever received.)