Preliminary Methodologies for Selecting Diesel Railways to Be Converted to Hydrogen

Although rail transport is often considered a crucial component of sustainable mobility, in some cases, such as non-electrified railway lines using diesel trains, it may not be entirely sustainable. The ideal solution would be to electrify these lines, but low demand and/or low traffic do not justify the costs relating to the installation of the contact line, the construction of electrical substations and the complete replacement of the train fleet. In this context, the conversion of non-electrified lines from diesel to hydrogen could be a suitable compromise. Indeed, in this context, the Italian National Recovery and Resilience Plan includes investment in hydrogen experimentation on railways and requires the identification of lines to be converted to hydrogen. Hence, this paper proposes some methodologies for identifying the lines suitable for conversion.