Union Pacific will speed up its locomotive improvements
OMAHA, Neb. — Union Pacific will spend more than $1 billion to upgrade 600 of its old diesel locomotives over the next three years and make them more efficient, but regulators still want it to do more to cut pollution from its engines.
UP’s move will accelerate the pace of upgrades the company already planned to make and help the Nebraska-based railroad cut roughly 210,000 tons of carbon emissions each year — the equivalent of taking 45,000 cars off the road. The railroad will go from modernizing 120 locomotives this year to modernizing 200 a year in each of the next three years.
“It’s really taking the older locomotive fleet and applying the latest and greatest to get one of the most fuel efficient locomotives we can have,” said Grace Olsen, who oversees locomotive engineering for UP.
The railroad estimates that this program will improve the fuel efficiency of these long-haul locomotives by up to 18 percent and help them produce peak power more reliably. To accomplish that, locomotive manufacturer Wabtec will strip down the locomotives and spend eight weeks overhauling their engines and installing new software and electronic controls.
The improved power will let UP pull the same amount of freight with fewer locomotives. That, combined with the railroad’s efforts to significantly boost the length of its trains, will allow UP to keep more of its fleet of 7,400 locomotives in storage. UP has already parked hundreds of locomotives as part of operational changes it has made over the past several years.
Wabtec says this UP project is the biggest single investment in modernizing locomotives in railroad history, though other major freight railroads are making similar improvements to their fleets.
“It comes down to really taking an asset that’s there and really infusing it with technology so that for the next 20 years of its life, it’s optimized,” said Gina Trombley, Wabtec’s chief commercial officer.
Regulators with the California Air Resources Board who have led the nation with their efforts to regulate locomotive pollution and lobbied the EPA to tighten its locomotive standards said the reduction in carbon emissions is welcome but that they would like to see UP focus more on reducing its particulate matter and nitrous oxide emissions, which are associated with increased cancer risks and other health problems — particularly around rail yards.
Diesel exhaust contains tiny particles that can penetrate deep into the lungs, carrying a variety of toxins that have been linked to cancer, lung disease, heart attacks and other ailments.
“What we’re talking about today is more GHG (greenhouse gas) focused, which we look at as important, but it’s a secondary impact when we’re talking about reducing freight emissions at ports and rail yards and their associated health impacts for communities,” said Cari Anderson, who oversees locomotive regulations at the California agency.
Regulators would rather see UP invest in new locomotives that can meet today’s more stringent environmental regulations instead of overhauling ones that were purchased roughly 30 years ago and continuing to use them for years.
Anderson said California wants freight railroads to upgrade their entire fleets to locomotives that can meet the EPA’s tough Tier 4 standard because that is associated with a 90 percent reduction in cancer risk or use locomotives with no emissions such as batterypowered ones that UP will be testing. Only about 5 percent of UP’s locomotives used in the state meet the Tier 4 standard.
UP said the best that these locomotives purchased in the 1990s can do is meet the EPA’s lower Tier 2 standard. The railroad said the improvements being made to these locomotives should help reduce some of the particulate matter and nitrous oxide emissions, but it didn’t have an estimate of how much those will improve.
UP is one of the nation’s largest railroads, with a network of 32,400 miles of track.