Re: Mr Rayner's views of Electrification.
- From: "R.C. Payne" <rcp27@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2008 10:32:18 +0100
Tony Polson wrote:
darkprince66 <darkprince17031966@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:Wasting how much diesel on each trip? 5 engines at 158 miles a trip
(10 engines on some journeys from December). Don't forget also that
Chester goes hourly from December. Thats a heck of a lot of diesel
each day. And if you can justify the use on the Chester/Holyhead
trains, you sure as hell can't do the same for their use on Lancaster
trains, or on BNS-Scotland.
Sad maybe, but I just did a quick train count on table 65, northbound
over Shap, there are 37 passenger trains a day, Monday to Friday,
operated by Virgin, First TPX and Scotrail. Of these, 21 are diesel
traction, electric only 16, meaning that around 57% of those trains
are using diesel they don't need to be. Expensive diesel that is going
to get progressively scarcer and if this waste does not damage the
case for electrification, I don't know what does.
Very, very wasteful...
So you would prefer that we use electricity, around 80% of which is
generated in the UK by burning fossil fuels?
As diesel gets scarce, so will gas. So gas fired electricity doesn't
offer a sensible alternative.
As diesel and gas get scarce, wind power will have failed to reduce
the UK's carbon emissions, just as it has failed in Denmark. So do
you think we should turn to coal? Coal generates about twice the
carbon emissions of gas for each kWh generated, so that's out.
That leaves us with nuclear. The proportion of nuclear generated
electricity is dropping as nuclear stations age. Some will soon be
shut down. Others are getting less and less reliable, and therefore
generating less power. The lead time for new nuclear stations is so
long that the percentage of nuclear generated electricity will
continue to drop until about 2020, when it will be much lower than now
(18% this year) and will only then start to climb.
So nuclear isn't a real alternative until some time after 2020.
... all this makes retaining diesel trains look very sensible!
Given that the lifetime of rolling stock is about 30 years, basing decisions on buying new on the basis of concerns about the generating mix in the next 10 to 12 years, and will change after that, is hardly sensible. All of our generating capacity is ageing, with big coal fired power stations and nuclear stations needing replacement in the near future.
The one thing that is certain is that we will be replacing many of our power station in the lifetime of any new rolling stock we build, and what is highly probable is any replacement that happens will yield a net decrease in carbon emissions per generated Joule, which will only serve to improve the carbon emissions performance of electric traction. Given what oil prices have done in the last 12 months, and the likelihood that similar things will happen many times in the lifetime of any rolling stock we are designing now, I don't see how new builds of diesel trains and shelving electrification is a sensible proposition.
Robin
.
- References:
- Re: Mr Rayner's views of Electrification.
- From: allan tracy
- Re: Mr Rayner's views of Electrification.
- From: Jonathan Morton
- Re: Mr Rayner's views of Electrification.
- From: darkprince66
- Re: Mr Rayner's views of Electrification.
- From: Tony Polson
- Re: Mr Rayner's views of Electrification.
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