Electrified Rail
offers one of the best options to provide transportation powered by renewable
energy. This meets one of the largest
challenges to transitioning from fossil fuels, clean mobility. Following is an excerpt from an upcoming paper
on Solutionary Rail, a Backbone Campaign effort to promote renewable-powered
electrified rail for freight and passengers. This excerpt explores the
tremendous carbon pollution reductions offered by shifting freight from trucks
to trains. Solutionary Rail will be
focused in several upcoming events, a teach-in
this coming Saturday, Feb. 21 in Seattle, and two Future of Rail conferences
cosponsored by Backbone and Railroad Workers United In Olympia, Washington and
Richmond, California.
The
world needs to back out of fossil fuels more quickly than is generally acknowledged. In order to stem global warming and avert climate
disruption challenging the stability of civilization and nature, humanity must
hold total
global warming to the peak seen since the last ice age, just a little over 1°C,
rather than the 2°C often cited, with no more than 0.4° C additional warming above what the world
has already experienced.
Holding
this line entails reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels to 350 parts per
million or less, the point at which the planet stops accumulating solar heat,
by 2100. This requires annual carbon pollution reductions of just over 6% immediately. Such deep carbon pollution cuts demand transformatory efforts in all areas
of energy generation and use.
Fortunately, the
solutions are emerging just in time. The electrical sector today is
experiencing rapid drops in the cost of carbon-free renewable generation. “Solar and Wind Energy Start to Win on Price vs.
Conventional Fuels,” the New York Times reported in late 2014. “The cost of providing electricity from wind and solar
power plants has plummeted over the last five years, so much so that in some
markets renewable generation is now cheaper than coal or natural gas,” the Times noted. Solar
energy will be competitive with power-grid-supplied electricity in at least
two-thirds of the global market, and up to 80 percent, by 2017, Deutsche Bank projects.
The
prospect for an economy substantially or even completely run on renewable
energy, a few years ago dismissed as the realm of dreamers, is moving into
reality. The Solutions Project has developed scenarios
for a 100% renewables energy supply. It is a fact in many localities already. Thus most of the carbon pollution depicted on the
accompanying U.S. Environmental Protection Administration chart can be eliminated. The electrical grid, commercial and
residential buildings and industrial processes can be transitioned to carbon-free
energy sources. Many agricultural processes, such as the manufacturing of
nitrogen fertilizer and crop drying, currently mostly done using natural gas,
can be performed carbon-free using wind and solar energy.
 |
| U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by source - U.S. Environmental Protection Agency |
The greatest challenge in moving to a fully
renewable energy supply is transportation, source of 28 percent of U.S. carbon
emissions. The world’s vehicles run 95
percent on petroleum. This is despite many years of subsidies for biofuels, which have come
under scrutiny as competitors for other uses of the land such as food, timber
and carbon storage. Advocates and
critics alike have agreed on frameworks
in which biofuels can be sustainably produced, such as from waste
materials. At the same time there is
growing consensus that sustainable biofuels feedstocks are limited and should
be reserved for sectors with no other feasible options such as aviation. Hydrogen, also posed as an alternative
vehicle fuel, has been slow
to emerge due to factors such as efficiency of production and difficulties
in distribution and storage on board vehicles.
These challenges combined with solar and wind
trends point to electrification with renewable energy as the primary low-carbon
option to replace oil-powered vehicles.
U.S. electric
vehicle sales more than doubled to nearly 120,000 in 2014, from 53,000 in
2012, and 2015 sales continue to outpace 2014 despite low oil prices. Major
initiatives by automakers including Tesla and General Motors are anticipated to
continue
growing the market with lower costs and extended ranges. Other local electrical
passenger transport alternatives include electric bikes, electric delivery
trucks, trolleybuses, light rail and heavy rail.
However non-petroleum alternatives for long-distance freight
transport providing the 500-mile-plus movements upon which our economy relies
are far fewer. Air freight might
transition to sustainable biofuels over several decades, while long-haul
trucking and barge shipping might be hybridized and also run on sustainable
biofuels. But, as mentioned, producing sufficient sustainable feedstocks
represents a major challenge. Due to
physical limitations of combustion engines, the efficiency with which these
modes of transportation use energy will also be more limited than with electric
drive, which is inherently more efficient.
For fully electrified long haul freight transportation the
railroad, the oldest form of mechanized mass transportation, stands out as the
best option for long-haul freight mobility in the 21st century. Today, rail locomotives are responsible for two
percent of U.S. transportation carbon emissions, while heavy-duty trucks
account for another 19 percent.[1] Shifting a substantial portion of truck
freight to rail powered with renewable electricity represents a significant
low-carbon transportation solution.
Conventional diesel powered rail already wins hands down for
transport efficiency. The Federal
Railroad Administration finds, “For all movements, rail fuel efficiency is higher than truck
fuel efficiency in terms of ton-miles per gallon. The ratio between rail and
truck fuel efficiency indicates how much more fuel efficient rail is in
comparison to trucks . . . rail fuel
efficiency varies from 156 to 512 ton-miles per gallon, truck fuel efficiency
ranges from 68 to 133 ton-miles per gallon.”
At the low end, a unit auto train is 1.9 times more efficient than its
truck equivalent, while a double-stack container train can haul freight 5.5
times more efficiently than trucks.[2]
The
efficiency advantage rests on basic physics. Steel rolling on steel has about
one fifth of the friction of rubber on concrete. Trains, especially
double stack container trains, are more efficient aerodynamically than an
equivalent number of trucks since one rail car reduces drag for the following
car. In addition, trains expend less energy accelerating and decelerating since
they stop less often. They also use less
energy climbing and descending hills due to reduced and more gradual grades.
Such
dramatic savings from shifting trucks to electrified rail means that even if
electricity is from modern coal plants, the worst environmental option, carbon
pollution reductions will still be substantial.
The ability to used renewable energy creates the very real possibility
of substantially carbon-free transportation. Electrifying 80 percent of
railroad ton-miles and transferring half of current truck freight to rail would
take about 1 percent of U.S. electricity.
Renewables in the first half of 2014 already supplied 14.3
percent of the nation’s electricity.
Wind alone provided five percent. Renewable expansion to run electrified
rail is well within reach.
Electrified
rail powered by renewables is a low-carbon solution for 21st century
freight mobility. Solutionary Rail
provides a framework to make it a reality.
For
more on Solutionary Rail go here.