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ENERGY

Deutsche Bahn signs renewable energy deal with RWE

Germany's national railway Deutsche Bahn (DB) and power company RWE on Monday signed a 15-year hydro-electric energy contract worth €1.3 billion ($1.9 billion).

Deutsche Bahn signs renewable energy deal with RWE
Photo: DPA

RWE is to supply the railway operator with about 900 million kilowatt hours of electricity per year, enough to run about one third of the DB’s long distance trains for a year.

The same quantity would supply 250,000 German households for a similar period.

RWE, the second biggest German power group, is building up its capacity to produce renewable energy as the government phases out nuclear power by 2022 in Europe’s biggest economy.

Deutsche Bahn bills itself meanwhile as the “biggest consumer of green energy” in Germany, and the percentage of electricity generated by renewable sources for the railway is to increase from 19.8 percent to 28 percent.

The contract covers the period from 2014 to 2028 and is to involve output from 14 hydro-electric generating plants.

By 2013, RWE said it will have invested almost €4 billion in expanding its alternative energy production capacity.

“With this move, we are getting closer to our vision of meeting all the railways’ electricity needs with renewable energy by 2050,” DB chairman Rüdiger Grube as said in a statement.

AFP/mry

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TRANSPORT

Copenhagen Metro lines reopen after two-week closure

Lines M3 and M4 of the Copenhagen Metro are back in service having reopened on Sunday, one day ahead of schedule.

Copenhagen Metro lines reopen after two-week closure

The two lines had been closed so that the Metro can run test operations before opening five new stations on the M4 line this summer.

The tests, which began on February 10th, are now done and the lines were running again as of Sunday evening, a day ahead of the original planned reopening on Monday February 26th.

“We are very pleased to be able to welcome our passengers on to our two lines M3 and M4,” head of operations with the Metro Søren Boysen said.

“The whole test procedure exceeded all expectations and went faster than expected and we can therefore get a head start on our reopening now,” he said.

Time set aside for potential repeat tests was not needed in the event, allowing the test closures to be completed ahead of time.

“Several of our many tests went better than expected and we have therefore not used all the time we needed for extra tests,” Boysen said.

The two lines serve around one million passengers every week, according to the Metro company.

READ ALSO: Copenhagen city government greenlights extension to Metro line

The new stops on the M4 line will be located south of central Copenhagen in the Valby and Sydhavn areas. The will have the names Haveholmen, Enghave Brygge, Sluseholmen, Mozarts Plads and København Syd (Copenhagen South).

The M3 and M4 lines, the newer sections of the Metro, opened in 2019 and 2020 respectively.

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