Great Western Coffee Shop

Following the Climate Change Committee's various reports (https://www.theccc.org.uk/publications/?topic=&type=0-report), and the government's own plan to have a plan (https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/932122/decarbonising-transport-setting-the-challenge.pdf), the actual "getting from here to 2050" plan is published today. Or at least that is announced in a written answer in Parliament (https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/transport-decarbonisation-plan), with comments from those having embargoed access, but the actual document doesn't seem to be out yet.

There are a number of other documents to be published today (or which will have been), including:

I note that the road haulage industry is sceptical that HGV's particularly large HGV's can be made fossil fuel free by 2040.  I note that these are mainly used on longer distance routes. 

I think that decarbonisation of freight probably needs a redesign of the whole logistics sector.  Changes in economics should drive this either by pure market economics or where this will not achieve the necessary outcome, by tax incentives (stick or carrot).   

Is there an opportunity for rail to have a greater role in trunk transport?

I would certainly hope that a lot more freight could be transported by rail, but elsewhere on these forums several respected members have cast doubts as to the viability of this.

In urban areas I would hope for more trolleybuses and hope that the infrastructure could be used also by electric trucks.
IMHO we need as a matter of urgency a national standard for interoperability of trolley buses AND FREIGHT vehicles. This needs action BEFORE every local authority develops its own bespoke type.

In remote rural areas, I would hope for more buses, preferably electric.

And all this electric transport is a bit pointless unless the great majority of our electricity is produced renewably. For the foreseeable future we will probably need some natural gas for electricity production, but the target should be to reduce gas burning and to increase renewables.

How many bus shelters are there ? and what proportion of these are roofed with PV modules.
How many station canopies or waiting shelters are there ? and what proportion are fitted with PV modules.

How many stations in windy locations have wind turbines ? I know of only one.

The plan itself has now appeared on line (https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1002285/decarbonising-transport-a-better-greener-britain.pdf). The CCC have responded it too, and much more positively than I expected.

Having looked through (some of) the 220 pages of this very big brochure, I'm not that impressed. As a plan, it's more a sketch than a real route map; its size is due to all the pictures, and the other kind of figures are pretty scarce. And quite a lot of the actions planned are making a further plan to do something - so still plans to have plans.

Much of the critical comment has been about it being written by Pollyanna Consultants LLP. The accusation is that the government is being unrealistic in saying new technologies will save us from having to make big sacrifices. But that can be rebutted by pointing out that the alternative is incompatible with democracy - "vote for us and we'll reduce your material standard of living by about 20%" would be more of a suicide note (at any length) than anything Michael Foot managed. The screaming and shouting in today's European Commission meeting, to be followed by more of the same as the "fit for 55" programme does the rounds, demonstrates the same conflict.

I largely agree, firstly that the report contains largely not plans for actual actions, but plans for more studies, research, consultations and reviews.

And also that significant change will affect people, especially those who drive or fly a lot, real action will require some drastic changes that are likely to be unacceptable in a democracy.

There seems to be a fairly general view that trading carbon emissions, offsetting carbon emissions and yet to be developed technology will allow life to carry on as normal. It wont.

Yes, largely the plan is based around the hope that this island will be able to continue moving around in the same way as we do now, except that batteries replace combustion engines. I believe this will be unachievable in urban areas and clearly larger investment is needed in public transport, cycling and walking, all three of which compliment each other. We are so bloody stubborn in the U.K. about our personal, class based show of wealth transport that we are prepared to completely ignore what other countries in the world are doing to change to ways of moving about that we like to mock as being out of date. Can’t go back to trams or trolleybuses, it’s seen as resigning, we must wait for the latest and best, those other things are out of date. When what’s really out of date is the internal combustion engine, by about 30 years.

I'm not sure why you say that - there are numerous places where public transport is mentioned, such as:

But you are right that, while the clear advantage of cars in rural areas and some longer journeys is mentioned more than once, the need for more and better public transport is not linked to urban areas. And that despite the evident need for less traffic to make space for more cycling etc. Perhaps the missing link is in the paragraphs following the above quote:

What's that about - ideas, anyone?

There's a summary of commitments at the start of the document, in which this is the railways section:

Public transport is always mentioned in plans like this, in the same method it would be in a local council plan. It’s mentioned in a way that is suggested that it won’t be the individual reading the piece that will change what they do. It’s mentioned in a way that suggests these other options might be possible for you but others will do the changing, you can carry on as before.

As far as I’m concerned, traffic is big problem as well as pollution. Vehicles racing past on dual carriageways or queuing along urban roads is still at the detriment of the other dominant three forms of ways of getting about. If you really want modal shift the other options need far more concentration than the private automobile. New technology is not needed to change, we have had the technology required for decades, we just need the will to change for the benefit of the generations of young people now and those beyond us. Something that no government report would ever be willing to admit

The only RECENT emerging technology that I have observed has been E-scooters.
And the reaction of TPTB has been how to restrict this newish and greenish technology, rather than how to encourage wider use.

"Ban them"
"If we cant ban them then at least restrict use to only hired machines"
"Require a car driving licence to operate an E-scooter"
"ban use on pavements"
"Ban use on roads"
"Treat as motor vehicles, with serious penalties for use after drinking"

I am going to suggest that most UK Jo(e) Publics wants to keep moving around in the way that (s)he has done for the last fifty years, largely with private vehicles, but perhaps with fossil fuels replaced by electricity that comes from the magic "sustainable" tree that provides an endless supply at no cost to the environment.  The utter convenience of having a private powered vehicle at your home, which you can use to ...
* go just about anywhere
* at a speed significantly in excess of anything self powered
* at any time you wish
* at an affordable price
* taking significant goods and chattels with you
* without having to mix with people not in your circle
... is attractive and hard to argue against.

   

From The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jul/14/uk-roadbuilding-strategy-climate-commitments-government-grant-shapps)

The e-scooter 'argument' is an interesting one.  Perhaps we should take a lesson from the introduction of that great other killer on the roads - the motor car - and allow them, but with a maximum speed of 4 mph and to be preceded by a person holding a red flag. I note that rule got changed; cars got somewhat safer and much faster.  Are we likely to see something akin to the Sinclair C5 as a town run-around?

No.

As I cheerfully admitted at two of the meetings I attended yesterday, I haven't got round to reading the plan just yet, so I will refrain from commenting on the actual detail for now. It did give me a killer opening line to a presentation though, in terms of Shapps timing its release for the start time of that particular meeting.

On the subjects of presentations, Decarbonisation and Zero Emission related issues are becoming ever more a feature of each transport presentation I give and meeting I attend. It is striking how much it depends on your audience though - I can give a presentation to one audience and have it well received by an eager, open minded gathering, and the exactly the same presentation barely a couple of hours later can bomb in front of a cynical, jaded crowd.

In general terms in the battle against Climate Change, I see us as the tenpin bowler who habitually scores spares rather than strikes - the will and on many occasions the effort is there, but not quite focused or clinical enough to score enough points to win the game.

Of course, but what’s missing is the choice for any other way of moving, particularly in urban areas, and that requires a change in planning too. We’ve built, and are still building, areas which are car dominated. So no wonder people have built their lives around the most convenient option, and option which also requires a certain level of affluence to keep turning over. We never want to take the risk as a nation of saying no to this way of living, particularly in the provinces. We suggest that a build it and they will come approach is the wrong way of doing things. So the loop will never be broken under the banner of it making the individuals life harder, less convenient and cost more money. A cost/benefit analysis approach to our future will end up with the same levels of congestion, and possibly similar levels of pollution just in different ways. All because it’s believed the public will refuse to use any new public or sustainable travel infrastructure and choose the perceived most convenient option of the car, the option that takes up the most room.

https://www.drycycle.co.uk

https://youtu.be/bFO5d2hw7Yg

An electric-assist four-wheel pedal cycle with a roof and windscreen, heated cabin, luggage space, seatbelt and crash protection, able to use cycle lanes and roads with no requirement for a driving licence, registration, insurance, etc. This is extremely practical urban transport for the vast majority of people – certainly far more so than a car.

But the answer is still no.

There is no "sustainable tree". There used to be, but Drax burnt it as biomass, to generate subsidies electricity.

Bristol and some other cities may already have it's evolved successor in the E-scooter.

In theory there could be if a plot of land is reserved for cultivating biomass and is only used at a sustainable rate while ensuring that soil is managed in a sustainable way and the carbon used in harvesting comes from renewable sources.  However in reality I suspect TonyK is right.

But 50 years ago there were few motorways and far fewer cars. It was a different world. You could drive into the city centre and, on a good day, park outside your favourite department store for 5p.

The growth in traffic since then has been sustained by massive spending on building roads, while other forms of transport have been defunded or squeezed to the margins. People have changed the way they get about. Far more people use cars for far more trips than they did 50 years ago because everything - the planning system, transport funding, the road and motor lobbies - has conspired to make it so. I'm not sure the Publics really care much about how they get around, as long as they can.

Interesting analysis of what can be done - my personal story here, and the conclusion is "it can mostly by done by public transport, and if you set your mind to it, it can be done in such a way that it does not degrade the quality of life".

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YES - there is a need to provide a practical alternative to the private car for a signifiant proportion of total journeys in order that people can switch. That means going roughly where you want, and when you want. It doesn't necessarily need to be exact.

I gave IT training courses for 25 years - courses every week, some at a base training centre and the rest on customer sites spread (for the most part) across the British Isles.  In 1993, I was driving 30,000 miles a year. By 2018, when I started to reduce the number of courses I was presenting, I had dropped to under 3,000 miles a year.  I wasn't travelling less - but I was using public transport much more.  There's a separate story to tell in how I achieved that, and made it to my quality of life advantage too.

Let me take a current example. A couple of months back, I joined the Melksham Amateur Photography Group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/119711905376132) on Facebook.  An opportunity to get out, see places locally with a photography eye and be shown things I had not noticed. In high summer, they meet from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Thurdays.  So - what have the opportunities been?

1. Brown's Folly, above Bathford.  16:20 bus on route 271 from outside my home to the Stone Wharf, at the top of Bathford, arriving there at 16:47. That's the last bus of the day - 2 hours early, so took a picnic and laptop and sat up there online - a change from working at home.  Left the event at quarter to 9 and walked down through Bathford to Batheaston Corner for the 273 service at 21:18 back to Melksham Market Place, from which it's a few minutes walk home. Happy to walk down Bathford but not up - hence the early arrival.  And, yes, I got soaked in the rain at 17:00.

2. Box. Walk to Melksham Market Place (a few minutes) and bus on route 273 at 17:56, arriving at The Ley in Box by 18:20. 40 minutes to look around on my own and find the car park (it's usually a car park!) where we were to meet. Bus back at 21:24, route 273, few minutes walk from Melksham Town Centre to home.

3. Bradford-on-Avon. Walk to Market place, Bus at 18:05 to Bradford-on-Avon, arriving at 18:19 near the meeting car park.  But the only way back after the meeting (or even leaving it early) is the train or bus to Bath and the bus from there - arriving Melksham Market Place as a minute after midnight, home (on foot) a few minutes later.  I gave this one a miss / could have driven if it was a necessary meeting; could have done it with a l-o-n-g wait in Bath or Braford afterwards too.  Thought about cycling, but didn't fancy the road from B-o-A to Melksham which is not cycle friendly in the ebbing light, nor did I fancy the longer route along the tow path in the evening gloom, and after walking round for 2 hours.

4. Chippenham. Buses from Melksham Market Place at 17:47 or 18:24 to Chippenham, arriving Chippenham (bridge) 18:09, or 18:46.  But the last bus back is 17:32! Leave the event at quarter to 9 for the last train at 21:02, 21:11 into Melksham then walk home - arrival at about 21:35. Sadly, personal stuff meant I could make that evening.

5. Semington. Last bus from Melksham at 18:04, 18:10 into Semington. But last bus back is 18:16. All other bus service at Semington cease by 19:00 too. This one is tonight and I WILL be going.  I will be cycling both ways - it's just a short distance over wider and quiet roads.

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"You can't expect to have all the buses in the evening / who would use it" type responses will be given (have already) when I have explained much of the above.  But, yet, look at Bus Back Better and how the elements that we are openly speculating on in there would adjust services to answer most of the issues in the five examples above.   Let me give you a taster

* The failure to provide an alternative to the evening service from Chippenham to Trowbridge when First Bus pulled out of the route 234, moving the last but of the day from Chippenham from 22:16 to 17:30 really needs to be reversed.   That would sort out the Chippenham trip, the Semington trip, and also provide an option back from Bradford-on-Avon via a change in Trowbridge - much more direct than via Bath.

* An extra round trip train, Westbury - Chippenham (or perhaps Swindon) - Westbury, long mooted and with good reason, would also give better return options from Bradford-on-Avon and from Chippenham in my examples, as well as a plethora more for a market which research suggests was there and is likely to return

No need for a direct evening bus from Bradford-on-Avon to Melksham to match the 18:05 I could have caught outbound.  Let's go for services that will be used.  Now - let's also see if we can get ticketing such that a return fare works out on one route or mode and back on another

In my view, one of the factors encouraging driving is the actual and perceived unreliability of trains.
In many jobs, the employer expects punctual and reliable attendance at the workplace. Anyone intending to use the train would  be at risk of delays due to only slightly adverse weather, industrial disputes, and breakdowns.

Many would consider a car to be needed for "bad train/no train days"
Having purchased the car and incurred the fixed costs of owning and running a vehicle, then the marginal cost of petrol for daily use can be attractive if compared to train fares.

I suspect that LARGE SCALE breakdowns have increased in recent years. I refer here not to individual train failures, but to large scale signaling or power supply failures that result in the closure of major London termini and advice to "not travel"

We also seem to suffer from railway problems in only moderately adverse weather during which roads and airlines operate as normal.

It will probably always come back to the same thing, that public transport is run as a retail choice rather than a public service. Both railways and road based public transport are expected to turn profit and where savings can be made in the short term to be perceived as profit. Reliability suffers when you make profit by cutting away staff or sensible maintenance. It must be clear now that there is no money in it. Publicly run transport fills those gaps that in buses as explained above and has staff to maintain railways to a reasonable standard, although I sense that under a government similar to the current they would be under continuous scrutiny, yet would we notice the priceless benefits to the environment and society, and see that as something worth paying taxes for?

Public transport really needs to be regarded as a common good, a bit like paved streets, public lighting, and the like, neither of which make a profit.

I know of someone who does exactly that. They own a small woodland and every year they cut about 3% of the area, for fence posts, rough building timber and fire wood. Free range pigs are kept and about one pig a month is killed for eating.

We also make far more trips by whatever form than we did 50 or 20 years ago. That sheer number has to be cut if we're to decarbonise meaningfully.

GWR are looking to convert an 802 to battery by taking the diesel generators and fuel tanks out replaced by batteries.

Page 78 has a map https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1002285/decarbonising-transport-a-better-greener-britain.pdf

Full overhead wiring looks like it will only get as far as Exeter, then on battery power to say Newton Abbot -Plymouth to get over the banks and charge the batteries for the trip into Cornwall. The other saving is no overhead in stations low bridges, or level crossings.

Local services will require a new type of train. 150s and 158s should be gone down here by next year and another 10 years the 166s will be on the way out.

As an aside, my road has about 50 houses and bungalows; 2 have electric cars and chargers fitted on the wall. 1% so it'is coming.

although Reading doesn't appear to have fully signed up to that. Some of the National Cycle Network is better.

Merseyside's Metro Mayor seems to be interested in battery power to expand Merseyrail according to this article that I stumbled across:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-57853592.amp

I really hope that this is not the case! It is beyond appalling if Plymouth at least does not get OHL when places as diverse as King's Lynn, Harwich, Clacton, Norwich and Skipton already have it.

 

Would it be such a loss if the wires stopped short of a complex junction or multi-platform station if the batteries had just been fully charged on a simple stretch of overhead wires.  If battery trains are successful the wiring at Paddington maybe could be removed. No maintenace and CHEAP.

I don't think those to points are linked, are they? And both are old news! The battery in an 802 was announced by Hitachi last December  (http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=23730.msg298586#msg298586), and while grossly oversold in reports is basically an experiment. And it's primarily Hitachi's project, with Eversholt's approval (as ROSCO owning the train), Hyperdrive's collaboration (making the battery packs), and GWR's assistance in running the trains (it's not clear what staff and whose that will call for).

The map is straight out of NR's Traction Decarbonisation Network Strategy which came out a year ago (why was it called a business case when published?). There was rather less interest shown then in its own thread (http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=24005.msg293959#msg293959). Note that those light green "ancillary electrification" lines are identified as requiring electrification, but given lower priority as no suitable method has been defined (yet).

The key point this time, I think, is this government's commitment to electrification "guided by" that NR strategy. Obviously no string has been measured, let alone cut to length, but then a plan with named names and dates was never going to happen yet. 

But this is aimed at cost saving again. Maintenance means reliability, a cost that cannot be calculated. Not to mention every train requiring a battery that will need materials continually sourced and questionable disposal. Over head wiring works, it has worked for decades. Planning because the technology might get better in the future is just short term thinking and cost saving. Batteries will have their uses on branch lines and sensitive locations but all mainline railways should be electrified. I feel the same with buses. Yes batteries can be used but we need to reduce the reliance on them where routes are generally fixed in urban areas. If it doesn’t change route except for the occasional incident, wire it. Additionally, are we going to manage charging every car, lorry, bus and train overnight?

I can see the merits of battery trains for branch line or secondary routes where the limited traffic does not justify electrification.
I can also see the merits of battery power for short sections of existing main lines that are problematic to electrify, Dawlish is the obvious example.
Battery power would also be most useful to proceed, possibly at reduced performance, when the wires come down. And for on board services when the train can not proceed for any reason.

I would not support battery power for long distances on fast or busy main lines as an alternative to electrification.  HMG are trying very hard to look green but without making any significant progress towards electrification of all fast or busy lines.

Subject to the odd SHORT gap, London to Plymouth should be electrified in the near term, and eventually to Penzance.

The batteries for the Class 777 weigh around 5 tonnes. The range is "up to 20 miles" on a single charge, meaning "up to" 10 miles each way, unless they can charge at the distant station. I wonder what the difference in cost is between equipping new trains with batteries, as opposed to extending the third rail for a few miles?

Still, it gives the chance to see how a train full of commuters on a wet winter morning behaves under battery power, and somewhere that won't affect me if it all goes stomach skywards.

"Up to 20 miles" does not sound very impressive for 5 tons of battery.
Does anyone have more technical details such as battery capacity in kwh and energy used per mile run.

The sea wall and the single track tunnel bores seem obvious examples; perhaps the bridge between St Budeaux and Saltash too if the opportunity of electrification is not taken to double track it  ;D . 

How is acceleration from stops on battery compared to on main catenary power?   I would have thought battery drain was far higher from a start than if maintaining speed, and perhaps stations are not good places to miss out from overheads, Dawlish excepted!

Complete an inland route and wires can reach Plymouth, then local trains along the sea wall can run on wire where necessary and battery in sensitive areas. A battery locomotive could drag the train from Plymouth to the other side of the tamar.

One of the bundle of documents released with the TDP was the Rail environment policy statement (https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1002166/rail-environment-policy-statement.pdf). This covers a bit of the same material, and extends into other environmental impacts of the railways.

I note that under "water" it deals mainly with water usage by the railways, and barely mentions their role in managing watercourses and drainage. In fact it generally interprets "environment" as what people are aware of around them. So it may have been a bit rushed - certainly some bits would benefit from more proof-reading, e.g.: "Freightliner, for example, has fitted stop-start technology in all its Class 66 and Class 70 fleet to reduce carbon, air quality and noise emissions when idling."

Acceleration does indeed use more power than steady movement. If a train needs say 400 kw at line speed on level track, but say 1,000kw to accelerate when on OHLE, then it is a design choice as whether the battery can supply 1,000 kw, or some lesser figure.
Fast acceleration is possible with modern batteries, but it might be worth accepting the loss of say three minute between London and Plymouth if that means a cheaper or longer lasting battery. Or even a "middle ground" whereby the battery can deliver 1,000 kw but the driver is instructed to limit the discharge rate to 500 kw unless running late.

Short sections without OHLE could probably be traversed by coasting, but a battery would be vital in case some unforeseen event resulted in stopping in the dead bit.

This is what struck me, especially when compared to the class 230.  Yes I'm sure there are all sorts of reasons for this but it's still not very good...or all that useful?

The battery pack in a Tesla Model S weighs 544 KG. The train in question weighs more than 9.2 Teslas. Including the battery, the Tesla weighs 2.8 tonnes. A class 777 weighs 99 tonnes, plus 5 tonnes for the battery pack. In a Tesla, the battery represents 20% of the overall weight. In a Class 777, the proportion is less than 5%. I think I can see why the range is so limited. I would also imagine that the demand from a battery pack varies much more widely in a train than in a car, largely because of the difference in friction, and also because trains don't have steep hills and bends to cope with.

Some priest from Grantham once said that



For trains, this means that the biggest demand is to get it moving, falling steadily as it accelerates more slowly, and very low once the train is going at line speed on the straight and level. A car will need a lot more input to overcome the greater friction of rubber on tarmac, and to keep speed around corners or uphill. Turning and climbing involve acceleration just to stay at the same speed. For motive power, a train will probably use battery power more efficiently than a car, but the battery size has to be sufficient to get the train moving in the first place. That will be a bigger drain proportionately than the Tesla will experience. Both train and car also have ancillary lights, aircon, and now WiFi and charging of phones etc. If the train is only going to switch to battery power at line speed, I should imagine that the add-ons will use as much power as the motors, but if it is going to stop and start at stations, the motors will need the lion's share. In any case, the specification will have to allow for an unscheduled stop and restart in the unelectrified section.

I am not a real physicist or engineer, btw, just a barrack-room one, and would appreciate it if someone would check my homework.

Roger Ford has covered this topic in his Informed Sources column for Modern Railways. Each month prior to publication he releases an ezezine email summarising the contents.

http://live.ezezine.com/ezine/archives/759/Informed%20Sources%20e-preview?p=1

Scanning the ezezine link should direct to the relevant edition of the magazine. May 2021 give a comparison using the body shell of DP2 and replacing power units by either batteries or fuel cells.

The ezezine gives an outline but the magazine article provides more details

Most informative. Mr Ford is also unequivocal in his conclusions, something you don't get from DfT.

I'm not sure there could be a 'sustainable tree', even in theory. With anything that uses energy there are always 'losses'; not all the chemical energy in each lump of coal that Drax burnt made it into electrical energy in the power plant's output. Similarly, does the growth of a new tree capture all the carbon released by burning the previous tree, remembering that plants respire (releasing CO2) and don't just photosynthesize all the time? I don't fully understand this article about the Amazon rainforest now emitting more CO2 than it absorbs (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/14/amazon-rainforest-now-emitting-more-co2-than-it-absorbs), but this quote from it does seem to support the view that biofuels can't be fully sustainable “The first very bad news is that forest burning produces around three times more CO2 than the forest absorbs."

In the case of Exeter to Plymouth/Penzance, it may well be that the sea wall section would make any scheme prohibitively expensive but the one that really seems to stand out is Worcester to Hereford.  Is there anything on this route which would make electrification difficult?

In theory there could be if a plot of land is reserved for cultivating biomass and is only used at a sustainable rate while ensuring that soil is managed in a sustainable way and the carbon used in harvesting comes from renewable sources.  However in reality I suspect TonyK is right.[/quote]I'm not sure there could be a 'sustainable tree', even in theory. With anything that uses energy there are always 'losses'; not all the chemical energy in each lump of coal that Drax burnt made it into electrical energy in the power plant's output. Similarly, does the growth of a new tree capture all the carbon released by burning the previous tree, remembering that plants respire (releasing CO2) and don't just photosynthesize all the time? I don't fully understand this article about the Amazon rainforest now emitting more CO2 than it absorbs (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/14/amazon-rainforest-now-emitting-more-co2-than-it-absorbs), but this quote from it does seem to support the view that biofuels can't be fully sustainable “The first very bad news is that forest burning produces around three times more CO2 than the forest absorbs."
[/quote]

The burning of any individual tree can not release more carbon dioxide than was absorbed by the tree when growing, from where would this extra carbon dioxide come ?

When considering a forest rather than a tree, the position is more complex. Harvesting* small numbers of trees from a forest should be carbon neutral*, the new growth absorbs carbon roughly equivalent to that emitted by burning the harvested trees.

When however an area of mature forest is destroyed, then a lot more carbon is emitted. That is because a mature forest contains a lot of carbon "locked up" in dead and dying trees, leaf litter on the forest floor, and other vegetation. The destruction of the forest releases this locked up carbon almost overnight if the above materials are burnt. If allowed to rot and be eaten by insects then the same amount of carbon is released but a bit more slowly.

If a new forest is established in an area not previously forested, then extra carbon is absorbed from the air by the new tree growth. After a few decades to a few centuries, the new forest will stop absorbing any new carbon. Trees will be harvested by man, or allowed to die and decompose naturally, and this will release carbon similar to that absorbed by the growing of the new trees.

If trees are harvested not for fuel but for furniture manufacture or building, then the carbon is locked up, not forever but until the furniture or building is destroyed by fire, or decomposes naturally.
Wooden furniture lasts on average from 5 years to a hundred years, but when disposed of returns the carbon to the air.
Wood used for construction lasts on average from a hundred years up to several hundred years, and carbon in the construction timber returns to the air when the building burns down or is knocked down.

When wooden furniture or the timber parts of a building are no longer needed for the original purpose, they should be burnt as fuel when possible. This produces no more carbon than than burning on a bonfire or dumping in landfill. A home may be heated thereby, perhaps displacing oil, gas, or coal.

*Excluding fuel used by chainsaws, vehicles, timber mills etc.

Ledbury tunnel might pose a significant challenge.  Colwall tunnel and Worcester Viaduct might also give some headaches.

I'm not sure there could be a 'sustainable tree', even in theory. With anything that uses energy there are always 'losses'; not all the chemical energy in each lump of coal that Drax burnt made it into electrical energy in the power plant's output. Similarly, does the growth of a new tree capture all the carbon released by burning the previous tree, remembering that plants respire (releasing CO2) and don't just photosynthesize all the time? I don't fully understand this article about the Amazon rainforest now emitting more CO2 than it absorbs (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/14/amazon-rainforest-now-emitting-more-co2-than-it-absorbs), but this quote from it does seem to support the view that biofuels can't be fully sustainable “The first very bad news is that forest burning produces around three times more CO2 than the forest absorbs."
[/quote]

The burning of any individual tree can not release more carbon dioxide than was absorbed by the tree when growing, from where would this extra carbon dioxide come ?
[/quote]
Presumably as the tree grows it also absorbs carbon, and lots of other elements, from the soil?

A growing tree absorbs carbon dioxide from the air, not from the soil.
Other minerals are absorbed from the soil, and for this reason, ash from the burning of fire wood should be returned to the soil and not dumped at sea or into landfill.

The tree would not absorb carbon dioxide from the soil but might it absorb carbon, which would be released as carbon dioxide if the tree was burnt?

Not so far as I am aware.

Not familiar with those places, but they sound like candidates for limited battery power to traverse short sections of the line that cant be affordably electrified.
ALL new electric trains should IMHO have either a battery or a small diesel engine for when the wires come down, and limited use of same should be considered for short sections that cant be electrified affordably.

The important part to note here is "in theory". The idea for biomass subsidies came from the theory, borne out by calculations on the back of a fag packet, that burning waste wood discharges CO₂ into the atmosphere, but so long as we plant new trees that absorb, or sequester in pseudo-scientific greenspeak, that CO₂, the proportion of atmospheric carbon dioxide will remain static. The UK produces about 2 million tonnes of wood products annually, so why not use the waste from that to replace coal in power stations? The lobbyists find that they are knocking on an open door, because government is keen to have anything that ticks boxes, so numbers are crunched and deals struck. To begin with, the power station uses "co-firing", ie burning wood along with the coal, but from 2016 starts to burn wood pellets alone. The strike price of £100 per MWh is agreed with the government, and the EU (remember that?) decides that is doesn't break any rules, although £92.50 per MWh for Hinkley C might still be an illegal state subsidy. Drax swings into action with gusto.

Fast forward a few years. The trimmings from the UK's wood industry don't fulfil the need. Drax burns 8 million tonnes of wood pellets annually. It has to source them from somewhere, and two thirds comes from the US. Some is waste from sawmills, some is "sustainably managed" forests which are chopped down, chopped up (I know, I didn't invent the English language) and stuck together before being shipped from Baton Rouge to the UK. This sounds a bit odd, even if it were all waste wood, but Drax (there are others, but Drax is the biggest) tells the world that this is a very good thing. You will find page after page of positive news about it if you search "Drax biomass" on google. It is only about three pages of search results later that pictures of destroyed ancient hardwood forests begin to show, and the energy used in making the pellets becomes apparent. The wood has to be dried, which is done using the bark as fuel, or it wouldn't burn well and could bring disease with it. It is energy intensive from start to finish, with the diesel used in the shipping being only a part of the story.

In short, a good theory is now being used for a bad purpose. We couldn't produce 8 million tonnes of wood here at home, and it can't be sourced from waste in the US and elsewhere. A lot of the wood comes from cutting down forests faster than they can grow, and yet again we are exporting our pollution problems. For this, Drax is being paid a healthy sum, expected to rise above £1 billion a year very soon - it was over £832 million last year.

Drax has a powerful voice in the lobbying trough, and a slick publicity operation producing lots of articles containing a high count of the words "sustainable" and "renewable". Read them critically, and you begin to notice a lot of missing detail. There are many voices being raised against this cosy setup, which is due to run to 2027 before coming up for renewal. Even the government seemed to be thinking that it was a rotten idea until the last general election. As a taster, look at  this from a protest group (https://ember-climate.org/commentary/2021/02/25/drax-biomass-subsidies/). You have to dig a little to find proper details though - not many people look beyond page 2 of the search results in search engines, and Drax seems to have bought them.

The best place to hide a lie is in the open, disguised as truth. I reckon this one is the biggest lie ever sold.

Leaving in the middle of nowhere I have no mains gas and rely on my log burner and oil deliveries. I also have a couple of acres of woodland and recently installed solar panels that will power the central heating. I'm fairly new to this and was hoping to become reasonably self-sufficient by using my own woodland for logs. Not sure it works entirely as even for a single household its quite a lot of wood to heat the whole house.

There's one acre of mature woodland and one of new growth. Based on limited data I suspect I'll need to cut down 5-6 mature trees a year for wood (using my electric chainsaw charged by the sun). As I'm growing the trees for wildlife and to look nice rather than logging its probably not sustainable as the new trees are too slow growing. The solar panels have a peak output of 6.5KW ( i think) which means on a clear winters day they should provide some central heating instead of relying on oil to heat the tank.

Which long explanation makes me wonder how 'green' biomass might be? I'd imagine the 'sustainably managed' forests are packed with fast growing wood and very little diversity or wildlife. Our neighbour has a biomass boiler and I was surprised how much wood pellet he gets through. It probably is more sustainable than oil but I can't help feel solar, nuclear, wind and tidal might score better.

I quite agree Tony. Similar questions can be asked about biodiesel,  for which a large part of the 'waste oil' used in the UK is imported from the far East. Apart from the absurdity of transporting it all that way using marine diesel, if it were truly a waste product why isn't it used in the countries of origin,  where there are also diesel  vehicles? There are concerns that waste oil is being diverted from uses such as animal feed, and so driving up demand for virgin palm oil.

The ethanol being added to petrol is produced from things like sugar beet and corn,  so displacing food crops somewhere else, and using lots of diesel and fertiliser. But it is a nice subsidised  crop for European farmers,  so there is a lot of political support.

I agree, biodiesel and bioethanol are produced largely from potential food crops, or by displacing the cultivation of food crops. As has been said, these "green" fuels also involve considerable diesel fuel in cultivation, processing, and transport.
Waste from agriculture can be a useful fuel, but would be better used in or near the place that produces them rather than transported halfway around the world.
Corn cobs for example if well dried make a good cooking fuel in places where the crop is grown.

The moderate use of locally grown fire wood is fine in my view. Trees do not live forever and cutting some for fire wood is fine.
What is not fine is clear cutting forests overseas to produce "green" biomass.

Closer to home, hundreds of fields are full of fast growing maize. Most will go straight to anaerobic digesters to make biogas so that some bus companies can say that they are using green fuel, while the food that could have been grown there is imported. I don't blame the farmers, who have mouths to feed.

Easy money drives perverse behaviours. The Renewable Heat Incentive in Northern Ireland was designed to get people to switch to renewable heat sources such as biomass (wood pellets again), heat pumps or solar. Good idea, you might think, but the problem was that the value of the incentive exceeded the cost of the energy. Soon, heaters were being installed in places that had never been heated previously, like car showrooms, barns and the like. Eventually, after a £500 million overspend, the government collapsed. You might also recall Hoover's offer in the early 1990s, to give two trans-Atlantic return air tickets to anyone spending over £100 on their products. The expectation was that sales of washing  machines would rise as people undecided about whether to replace the current model made their minds up. The reality was that people planning a trip to the states bought a £100 vacuum cleaner instead of an air ticket. Hoover's European arm ended up being sold to Candy.

So it is with anything else, and the renewable energy drive seems to attract more than its fair share.

Most maize grown in Europe, if it doesn't go to bioethanol, goes to feed livestock. In the USA, it it doesn't go feed livestock, it mostly goes to produce "high fructose corn syrup", a very cheap way of making processed foods sweet without having to print "sugar" in the ingredients. Very little goes to feed humans directly as corn on the cob or tins of sweetcorn.

I support renewable energy provided that this is not in competition with food crops. My feelings may be summarised as follows.

Solar on new or existing buildings--------------In favour.
Solar farms in the open--------------------------In favour with reservations due to land taken up.
Wind, onshore or off------------------------------In favour.
Tidal power----------------------------------------in favour.
Bio ethanol----------------------------------------Opposed, except* on a small scale in exceptional circumstances
Bio Diesel------------------------------------------Opposed, as above.
Imported wood chips-----------------------------Opposed, de-forestation, fuel used in transport.
Locally harvested logs----------------------------In favour.
Burning waste wood for fuel----------------------In favour if not imported.
Hydroelectric power-------------------------------In favour, but note limited scope for expansion.
Wave power----------------------------------------Maybe, but has been the "next big thing" for decades.
Methane from anaerobic digestion----------------Yes but only if the inputs are truly waste.

*Bio fuels may be justified on a small scale for agriculture and other vital uses, can compare well with growing oats to feed horses. Not for general flying and driving. Bio ethanol is a useful fuel for small scale uses in emergencies or whilst camping etc.

I was wondering about solar on roads ... https://ecavo.com/solar-roads/

Very silly idea IMHO. Making PV modules able to withstand the very frequent cyclic loading of vehicles is no doubt possible, but it sounds expensive and unreliable. Consider not just normal vehicles but the odd exceptional load.
This sounds like the sort of thing that HMG like "GREEN INNOVATION"
Many more sensible alternatives exist, including PV modules along the central reservation, PV modules atop motorway service stations, and roofing the parking areas with PV. All readily achievable with today's off the shelf technology, no research needed, just get on and do it.

As a slight aside (presumably there isn't really much prospect of barges having a very big future outside of leisure!) I found this YouTube video interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5jsb72nCRE

There are obvious advantages to electrifying barges, as anyone who has been in the bottom of a lock filled with diesel fumes could attest. Noise is another obvious issue; it seems odd to head off down the cut for a bit of peace and quiet using a puttering engine.

As with all these things, there are choices: parallel hybrids, serial hybrids and pure electrics, for example, and a variety of battery technologies. What struck me as particularly intriguing was that if you cover the top of an 18m barge with solar panels, they should produce about 3kw on a good day - which is just about right to keep the barge motoring along. On a bad day, you might only get a third of that, but you probably won't be motoring all day and you'll be charging your battery when you moor up. Heavy batteries are neither here nor there in a vehicle which travels at a brisk walking pace.

I think it is likely that electric barges will become very popular quite quickly.

I agree that battery powered barges have a future, mainly for leisure.
A battery large enough to propel the barge can also supply domestic power for lighting, cooking, and perhaps limited heating. This would replace the fossil fuels used for these purposes.

If PV charging was found inadequate, then charging from a shore supply is possible at some moorings.

3 KW sounds excessive for a barge. They used to use a horse, which has an output of a bit less* than one horsepower* One horsepower is about 750 watts mechanical output from a motor, or about 900 watts electrical input after allowing for losses in the motor and drive circuit.

*The original definition of the horsepower involved an actual horse, but perhaps it was an unusually large and strong example.

Go tell them on the Rhein!

I saw a suggestion in Another Place some months ago that motorways should have wind turbines along the central reservation. After watching a number of enthusiastic supporting comments build up, I pointed out that a) bits fall off regularly b) they would be very distracting c) the motorway would have to be closed for several months to install them, then at regular intervals thereafter for maintenance. That remains the last comment on the subject. Solar obviously went a bit further, with actual solar roads built, but doesn't seem to have fared much better. I did, however, see a solar railway in Japan. Riding from the centre of Tokyo to Narita airport on the Metro, we passed mile after mile of solar panels. I found later that when a new northerly line to the airport had been built, the boffins decided that there was no need for four track now, and replaced two tracks with solar panels.

Was that meant to be counterflow thread drift? Because Decarbonising Transport etc. does contain this as an atomic commitment:

The support for that in the main text says (P 139):
151 DfT (2020). Mode Shift Revenue Support (MSRS) grant scheme 2020 to 2025 (online). Available at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/mode-shift-revenue-support-msrs-grant-scheme [this is for shifts to rail or canals]
152 DfT (2020). Waterborne Freight Grant Scheme 2020 to2025 (online). Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/waterborne-freight-grant-scheme [this is mainly for coastal shipping]
153 DfT (n.d.). Internal DfT analysis


Incidentally, why do they (whoever they are ) keep pushing Modal as a suitable fibre for shifts? I've found it suffers badly from pilling. (Note: not Pilning. Or piling.)

I'd missed the bit about inland waterways in the report. But I don't suppose they mean narrow boar canals, surely?

Not sure about modal fibre. A bit of moral fibre might help us in these difficult times...

Too many people quite happy to preach and talk the talk but not walk the walk, I find on that front, particularly over the past year or so.

I don't think they would get much use: there are very few skinny pigs.

A good point. I must research these things better in future.

Well, most inland waterways are narrow in important places - like locks. The wide bits, like rivers, don't go very far on one level.

But what this MSRS scheme involves is HMG offering money, and sitting around waiting for applications to come in. So they don't need to have a clue whether it makes sense, other people will work that out for them. It started in February 2020, and I can't see any data about how many grants have been approved. I'd guess not a lot - it's tempting to guess none, but in this funny old world there's bound to be a couple of things it could work for.

Some narrower than others.

There are also some wider waterways such as the Aire and Calder Navigation and the Manchester Shop Canal.  The Thames in London might also be useful. 

The Sharpness & Gloucester canal was the world's widest and deepest canal when it was built in 1827.

Looking slightly wider than the railways. I see the government can carry on building roads despite decarbonisation plans:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-57935608 (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-57935608)

I found more interesting "Standing Still" from the RAC Foundation https://www.racfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/standing-still-Nagler-June-2021.pdf (https://www.racfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/standing-still-Nagler-June-2021.pdf).
So for 4% of time on the road they make a lot of noise about LTNs (Low Traffic Neighbourhoods) and cycle lanes. But does come back to batteries and the charging of them.

Is that Manchester's answer to Oxford Street? The ship canal, of course, could still be carrying huge amounts of goods if we wanted it to (ie the economics allowed it), but these days it is also becoming a wonderful peaceful location for wildlfe, though a compromise between the two should be possible.

My understanding of "ancillary electrification" was not that "no suitable method has been defined" but that the business/financial case for electrification wasn't great but that nevertheless electrification was considered to be the best (or only) way of decarbonising such routes. If I'm correct on that, a route that is straightforward and relatively cheap to electrify could still be categorised as "ancillary electrification" simply because it doesn't see sufficient traffic to deliver a large enough financial return. I suspect some routes with infrequent services are earmarked for 'ancillary' electrification only because they carry freight traffic which cannot run on battery or hydrogen, and others (with infrequent services and no freight) simply because they would require a micro-fleet of battery or hydrogen units with no suitable depot facility nearby.

I don't agree with the installation of a diesel engine for this purpose (as has been done on the class 801 units) unless this is massively lighter than the battery alternative because it adds alot more complexity/expense/moving-parts making maintainance more complicated (and requiring fuelling facilities on depots) - one of the benefits of electrification is of course supposed to be simplified train maintainance (reducing rolling stock costs).

I would however agree with the installation of batteries on new electric stock to provide 'hotel' power (HVAC, toilets etc.) for several hours in the event of a electrification system failure. I am less certain of the usefulness of batteries to actually move the train (except on the routes where the TDNS does NOT recommend electrification) since, in the event of a power failure, there is likely to be an older train without traction batteries in the section ahead preventing movement anyway. Admittedly we would eventually get to a point where there are no such old trains, but even then a dewirement episode is likely to mean the train that has OHLE tangled in its pantograph is not going anywhere meaning any trains behind it are similarly stuck. I would therefore not want to increase the weight or cost of a train by installing more battery capacity than is necessary to provide 'hotel' power for several hours - however if the same quantity of batteries can (with minimal extra cost or complication) be used to move a short distance to the nearest station (at the cost of reducing the 'hotel' power from hours to minutes in the event that the batteries are used for traction) feel free to build that in.

That may be true, but remember that plants respire. The amount of CO2 absorbed while the tree was growing could well be less that the total amount of CO2 released over the lifetime of the tree (including the emissions from the tree being burt). Also, as you correctly pointed out later in your post, the idea that harvesting trees is carbon neutral ignores fuel used by chainsaws, vehicles, timber mills etc. Being really pedantic, I could also point out that my heavy breathing from swinging the axe around to split logs for the fires that help heat the house that I call home will have increased my CO2 emissions slightly!

Intuitively, this seems correct; a young tree (increasing its volume and therefore carbon stored relatively quickly) should to my mind absorb CO2 at a faster rate than a mature tree. However, to my surprise a few months ago I heard someone say (on a TV programme about climate change) that a study on the particular forest they were looking at found that the young forest was absorbing less CO2 (and possibly even emitting more than it absorbed) than an area of mature woodland. I mentioned this to my mother (who is growing a forest garden) who backed this up by saying that saplings of large trees are poor absorbers (and/or emmit more CO2 than they absorb) and only become benifical in reducing greenhouse gas concentrations in the air once they are 10 years old or more. If true, it has implications for the idea that growing such trees for firewood and felling them at a relatively young age.

That seems to make alot of sense. If the wood is waste and is going to be burnt or decompose anyway you might as well use it to heat a house or generate electricity. The amount of waste wood available is probably not going be sufficient to make much of a difference, but I cannot think of any reason to object to the burning of genuinely waste wood as a fuel, except perhaps the emissions from transporting it somewhere to be burnt (rather than just leaving it where it is to decompose).

Here's someone else at pains to say how really wasted their waste-as-feedstock is. It's also what Grant's other man Chris Heaton-Harris has been up to today. From DB cargo (https://tinyurl.com/xhz8pww):

Then they came up with another PR stunt contribution to decarbonisation, (https://uk.dbcargo.com/rail-uk-en/metaNavi/news/DB-Cargo-UK-to-invest-2-6-million-in-new-automotive-facilities-at-Toton-6323360) and repainted a further class 66 (66004) with the slogan "I am a climate hero":

There was also a note to editors: "DB Cargo UK currently operates 228 diesel and electric locomotives that transport in the region of 37 million tonnes of freight each year across the UK and into Europe. It uses approximately 45 million litres of red diesel a year."

Recent news reports suggest that competition for HGV drivers is pushing up wages and one report suggests that employers are having to significantly increase wages and are passing this on to their customers in increased prices. It seems they were very low (one advert copied onto twitter was stating £8.91 per hour which is not even about the real living wage. Its not just wages but terms and conditions will also have to improve, which is likely to impact on costs as well. 

Distribution costs include the costs of transport, the costs of warehousing and processing facilities such as packing plants taking into account economies of scale, and the costs of capital in stock in the distribution system.   

Current distribution networks are the result of a detailed analysis of these costs and selecting the optimum distribution network to minimise the overall distribution costs.  Changing distribution systems also has a one-off cost associated with it so there is unlikely to be a rush to make big changes until firms are sure that the changes in costs are going to be in the long term. 

However I expect that the major logistic companies will be starting to look at how they might rebalance their networks to reduce ongoing costs based on what they see as future scenarios.  If rail is to have a key part of this then there needs to be a clear rail freight policy from DfT so that the logistics companies can make a reasonable assessment of the long term costs of using rail. 

I mentioned Innovate UK's "UK TRANSPORT VISION 2050: investing in the future of mobility (https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1008833/IUK-050821-4293_Innovate_Future_Transport_A4Portrait.pdf)" on another thread, but it probably makes more sense for any comments on it to go here. The idea of this report is to concentrate on those areas where a bit of pushing is needed to get the necessary technical advances moving. So it should differ from the decarbonisation plan where that plan assumes something won't be possible soon enough, but it will make meeting the overall objective a lot easier (perhaps even possible) if is.

This was the thinking behind the push to biomass in power stations instead of coal. As happens when wads of cash are waved, though, things turned out different. The total of wood produced by the UK in terms of cutting trees down amounts to about 2.5 million tonnes annually. Drax power station uses 8 million tonnes annually, cut down abroad, dried, processed into wood pellets, shipped from Canada, the USA or Europe, then burned, producing about 12 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in the burning, plus a lot more in the production process. For this, Drax is paid nearly £1 bn annually. That doesn't make a lot of sense.

I agree that imported wood chips are not a sustainable or green energy source.
I see no harm in the burning of locally produced firewood, for domestic heating. UK timber production could be increased, but not sufficiently to fuel Drax or equivalent capacity.

My current firewood supply is small oak branches, from a tree taken down for building timber.

Given how recent the Transport Decarbonisation Plan was, you wouldn't expect the new overall national "Net Zero Strategy: Build Back Greener" (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/net-zero-strategy) to add much of substance. For reference, this is the summary on railways from of the section on transport (p 159):

Some of that might bear quoting tomorrow, perhaps ...

I note that "the end of diesel by 2040" has become "ambition to remove all diesel-only trains" by that date, thus allowing hybrids to carry on running on diesel. In fact, allowing more than that because what was previously presented as a deadline has become an "ambition".

IIRC bi/tri-modes were always to be allowed after 2040, it was just all diesel trains that were supposed to be gone.

Am I reading too much into this, but why are they not expressly committing to the most tried and tested means of reducing carbon use on the railways, namely electrification of as much of the network as reasonably possible?

I’m guessing that the government and industry are applying the same rules as other areas on climate change, the idea that technology will have exponential improvement if we wait long enough. For some odd reason perhaps we will think that tried and tested technology, that has been for most of the last century, will no longer work if technology gets better, or perhaps it will be an embarrassment from the eyes of the rest of the world. The more likely reason is that this particular government doesn’t want any responsibility for any infrastructure in the future and neither do the private companies.

All major rail routes should be electrified, using established and available technology.
I suspect that the government are rather reluctant due to the Great Western electrification debacle.
Waiting to see if something different or better turns up is not a realistic option. Electrify now, not overnight of course but with a target of say a hundred route miles a year, or even more.

A hundred miles a year would see Plymouth reached in not many years. After doing major routes, then start on secondary routes and branches connected thereto.

Use battery power where appropriate, but this would in all but special cases, be second best.

Agreed. Battery power should be kept to a minimum as the potential for other environmental problems and charging demand are yet to be foreseen. Consider every ICE vehicle in this country running on battery, from the locomotive to the chainsaw. It is difficult to see how it can be accommodated, how much consumption of raw materials, the charging overnight effects and how many extra vehicles might be required to make up the distance that services may require.

Yes, battery power has IMHO a bright future for secondary routes and branches that are lightly used, and also for short stretches of main lines that are problematic to electrify.

Extreme conditions such as at Dawlish, tight clearances  in existing infrastructure, and the like.

Also for through services from London or Bristol on to the Minehead branch, and no doubt in other places with similar circumstances.

I remain of the opinion that all new electric trains should have either a diesel engine or a battery for when the wires come down. A reasonable specification would be sufficient to run on board services for several hours, and then to proceed at much reduced speed to the next major station.

Technology will always improve. Most of us here remember the introduction of the energy saving bulb - the curly neon 11W replacement for the tungsten filament 60W bulb, now itself a fading memory following the introduction of the 4W LED. Internal combustion engines have got far more efficient, with cars doing the sort of MPG that even Minis couldn't manage back in the day. Carburretor? Brilliant invention, now serving only a niche. High bypass jet engines are much more economical and reliable than their predecessors. Batteries? We have gone from lead acid (although still in use where it is the best fit) to lithium ion, and there are new types appearing regularly. So yes, the old still works, but changing to the new will save in the long term. The difficulty is in knowing when, and in persuading someone to part company with something they invested a lot of cash in. Some things become practically obsolete overnight - a modern smartphone does more than every gadget in my office did at the dawn of my "career", but not all.

All that said, I can think of no real practical alternative to 25 KV OHLE for getting big trains moving at big speed without emissions on the way, and electricity is still made by spinning things. Even nuclear largely boils water to spin things, unless it's in space.

Battery seems the wrong way of doing for trains.  My carpenter / property maintenance guy son in law buys the expensive tools that most DIY'ers avoid, because cheap ones are a false economy to him. The batteries are the usual cause of death, although he has noticed an improvement from about 6 months to about 8 months. The cost of a replacement battery is sometimes more than replacing the whole lot. I haven't seen much top persuade me that batteries are a long-term solution for trains, and the same may prove to be true of HGVs too, without a quantum leap in useful life. That leads me to the tried and tested old-fashioned OHLE for the foreseeable. The technology at either end might change dramatically, but you can't beat a copper wire for the bit in between.

I agree with most of this, but is this not the first time in history we are simply waiting for technology to improve rather than just embracing the new technology as it occurs after much scrutiny? It appears that we shun what’s available now in favour of what’s around the corner and we’ve been doing that for several decades where road transport is concerned. This is easy to do as it requires no commitment and the private companies with interest in their particular market can introduce technologies as and when they feel. Variable valve timing, 16 instead of 8 valves, fuel injection over carbs, all moving on but essentially no better for the environment as it’s still burning stuff at the point of use for traction so, as I see it, the same as it was when it became the chosen form decades ago. Yes, technology moves on but you must admit the internal combustion engine has been the only choice for over 100 years in some transport.

The current situation with climate change should require us to move towards the obvious rather than delay for the latest. The underground lines in London all use technology that is old but still does the job and so will potential future electrified lines in 100 years if we press on with them now instead of trying to avoid doing anything for fear of future cost. The basic principles of transport are there we just need to choose the right power source to make it favourable for future generations.

Now, where battery technology is concerned, yes it has and will move on but can we predict the effects of sudden change? The demand for the raw materials? The effects of mining and recycling those materials? We don’t want to end up with another problem in years to come so why not reduce the battery requirement? If a transport route is fixed why not electrify it by other means and keep the battery use down until the facts are established? No permanent wiring this time around will ever be redundant if built, it will all still be better for the environment than the internal combustion engine regardless of how technology improves and the internal combustion engine we are currently reliant on for every aspect of our lives. Can we risk the battery being involved in every aspect of our lives the same way if it’s only slight improvements over time?

If you check the history of that claim, it hasn't changed - you just remembered it without the caveats, as we all usually do.

The transport decarbonisaiton plan studiously avoided any clear dated commitment before 2050, and filled in the space with promises unrelated to carbon. The specific promise on this topic was:

So it was already an ambition. And going back to Jo Johnson's official announcement in 2018, that was actually a speech, scripted as a succession of one-line one-sentence paragraphs (as they do these days). And it was an ambition - and an ambitious one - from the start:

It looks as though someone agrees with our negative thoughts about imported wood chips being green or renewable.

Climate change activists have boarded and halted a train carrying wood chips to Drax power station.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-59267244 (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-59267244)

Hitachi have reannounced that GWR first-step single-battery train, and added another for TPE (owned by Angel, rather than Eversholt). This article in International Railway Journal  (https://www.railjournal.com/fleet/british-hitachi-tri-mode-trains-to-begin-trials-next-year/)has more detail on the progress of the project:

I am normally quick to condemn stunts by ego warriors, but I won't be quite so harsh this time. This is a particularly nasty bit of greenwashing for profit, and deserves a much higher profile than it has amongst the general public. Drax burns some 8 million tonnes of wood annually. If it replaced every tree immediately, how many years would it be before the carbon released by burning is extracted from the air? I have seen reports that suggest a century to break even on the carbon front. I don't agree with trespass on the railway or getting in the way of the smooth running of trains, but Drax needs to stop. The current subsidy of over £800 million pa to burn forests is due for renewal in 2027, and Drax's propaganda machine is busy paving the way to a new deal. Hopefully, by that time the government will have decided against renewal. The previous Theresa May administration was getting cold feet about it, but proved largely ineffectual in everything else.

More nuclear, now!

Gets my vote!

I am in general "neutral" as regards new nuclear power stations. I can see the merits but have concerns about rapidly inflating costs and ever extending completion dates.
I do not trust any chinese involvement for both national security and quality control reasons.
I do not want to pay a potential enemy to place a nuclear bomb on our territory.
Neither do I trust chinese components to work safely and reliably in a critical application.

I have more faith in the proposed (relatively) small nukes from Rolls Royce, based on established technology used in nuclear powered submarines.

British components at Windscale. American components at Three Mile Island. Japanese and US components at Fukushima. Soviet components at Chernobyl. Chinese components at Taishin.

Who are we to say Chinese components are worse than any others? Who are we to say British nuclear power station operators are any less likely to succumb to human error?

Potential enemy? I'd rather see China as a valuable trade partner than the bogeyman.

I'm not opposed to nuclear power. However my insider chum is rather of the view that the 'cheap SMR' concept is a bit of a smokescreen (if you'll forgive the pun!). By the time you've made them as safe as their bigger cousins, they're no cheaper.

In my view, chinese electrical components ARE worse than those from other major countries. Fakes and forgeries of all types abound. Examples include 13 amp style plugs with no fuse, IEC leads without an earth, and grossly undersized flexible cords.
With that kind of thing prevailing I would not want chinese components in something as critical as a nuclear reactor.

Also a very poor record on human rights and on the environment.

I very much doubt that reactor builders will be using knock-off components.

There is a problem at the bottom end of the market with cheap and dangerous consumer goods from China, I don't doubt that. There are, however, many excellent Chinese companies providing both consumer and industrial components that are on a par with those from other countries.

This reply is being typed on a Chinese smartphone. A device I've never had an issue with.

很高興聽到這個消息！

China, like Britain, America, Germany and Japan before it, did not get to be the workshop of the world by making tat but, again like all those places, neither did it reach that position by eschewing the chance of a quick yuan.

I possess a beautiful indulgence: a 1 Gauge model of 5960 'Saint Edmund Hall'. It is exquizzically built and finished to the highest standards; manufactured by the SanCheng Company, China.

 My online translation had it as "very high to get this message" which has some potentially interesting interpretations.   ;D

Google translate makes it "Glad to hear this news!"

别客气

That's easy for you to say.

如果他们建造它，我们就会来

他們知道他晚餐吃了什麼.

呢条线已经退化喇。唔该分成一条新嘅线。

مرحبًا - أعتقد أن لدينا بعض القواعد أو الخطوط العريضة حول النشر باللغة الإنجليزية.

हो, यो नेपाल-अललिंग हो

I agree with Phil Wakely. Moving gracefully back to the subject  and my first language in accordance with Graham's gentle reminder, here's something about aviation and decarbonisation. Damon Hill makes a slight boo-boo with the chemistry, but nobody's perfect*.

https://youtu.be/afhh6O10kFs


(*Including me. Apologies if the previous link didn't work - my bad.)

My already poor opinion of chinese nuclear reactors has now worsened further.

Back in the summer, an accident occurred at a chinese nuclear reactor, fuel rods were damaged by overheating and radioactive fumes released.
Reported at the time, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-57496831 (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-57496831) UK nuclear experts referred to a "partial meltdown" and the chinese authorities to "minor damage to some fuel rods"

It now seems that this is a generic fault, and could affect Hinkley C, which may need some re-design. Presumably a few more billions and a few more years delay.

https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/hinkley-point-c-could-be-delayed-by-chinese-nuclear-plant-fault-02-12-2021/?tkn=1 (https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/hinkley-point-c-could-be-delayed-by-chinese-nuclear-plant-fault-02-12-2021/?tkn=1)

Sometimes, you need to look not just at what is being said, but at who is saying it. If it were anyone but Dr Paul Dorfman sounding the alarm, I would be reaching for my tin hat, and getting the washing in. I am sure he is extremely learnèd and very much at the cutting edge of his specialism, which is solar energy. He runs a service called the Nuclear Consulting Group, which was awarded a two-year grant by Greenpeace for a project to "influence UK and pan-EU policy and community away from risky and uneconomic nuclear power and towards a more sustainable and cost-effective renewable and energy efficient future" according to the the annual report of Greenpeace Environmental Trust for year ending 31 December 2020. Hardly what I would call objective and neutral on the matter.

I am surprised that New Civil Engineering took him as a source. The Express was forced into publishing a retraction and apology (now vanished from their website) only last month after publishing a provably false bit of nuclear disaster rhetoric from Dr Paul.

If you want to read some of his older scaremongering, have a look at  this selection (https://theecologist.org/profile/dr-paul-dorfman). And if you want to write objective reports on efficiency in modern abattoirs, don't ask an activist under contract to the Vegan Society for a quote.

Looking wider than the UK, but staying with decarbonisation and transport (though not necessarily of transport) – according to figures from UNCTAD, 40% of global shipping by tonnage is fossil fuels: oil, gas and coal.

(https://thumbor.forbes.com/thumbor/960x0/https%3A%2F%2Fspecials-images.forbesimg.com%2Fimageserve%2F5f6da98734e52c5486c869e2%2F40--of-all-products-transported-by-global-shipping-are-fossil-fuels-themselves--coal-%2F960x0.jpg%3Ffit%3Dscale)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/nishandegnarain/2020/09/25/loud-calls-for-global-shipping-to-ditch-fossil-fuels-and-meet-climate-goals/

This means that decarbonisation of energy (even without decarbonisation of shipping) brings the bonus of fewer ships, and therefore also less pollution of seas, less sonic disturbance for whales, etc. Something similar will apply on land with fewer oil tankers and pipelines needed. And of course fewer refineries.

And of course accidents result from the transport of fossil fuels, ships sink, rail tankers crash or derail, road tankers run of the road or collide, pipelines leak, etc.

Less use of fossil fuels should result in fewer such accidents.

Exactly.

This has some similarity to the railway and coal. Pre-Beeching, we had a lot of steam trains. Many of those were employed in moving coal around the country to fuel the steam strains. We also at that time used an awful lot of coal to make electricity and to heat homes. Then, like a wet Jed Clampett, we struck oil and gas in the North Sea, and installed gas fires and central heating across the land. The coal trains became much less frequent, and the coal depots beside railway lines started to shrink, then vanished altogether. I still recall seeing the coal train heading for Wapping Wharf in Bristol, finishing as late as 1987.

Curious there. What happened using coal on Wapping Wharf? I'm sure there wasn't a power station or anything like that and although I vaguely think the docks were still in commercial use until around 1987, it seems unlikely it would have been for anything as bulk as coal. Or was it?

It was the point of delivery for the many coal merchants who ruined their shoulders and ankles by carrying half-hundredweight bags on their shoulders daily, delivering to houses and businesses across the city. Smaller yards were in Nailsea, Long Ashton, Montpelier, Filton and others. The yards, shrinking yearly, lasted longer than the coal trains. Deliveries were by the occasional tipper lorry as trade dwindled.

There are a few clickable pictures in  the Harbour Railway Blog (https://bristolharbourrailway.co.uk/industrial-railways-of-bristol/history/)

It seems that doubts as to the merits of large scale biomass burning are growing.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-59546281 (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-59546281)

News report.

Our coalman used to deliver in sacks of a full hundredweight, none of these 56lb half-measures!  Was ours a supercoalman, or yours a lightweight?  ;)

As late as the late 1970s the coal for Evesham used to arrive in 12T mineral wagons, to be shovelled out by the coalmen and later bagged-up for distribution around the towns and villages.  Weighed out on a big balance type scale.  They used environmentally sound re-usable sacks, of course.

They'd come up into the 'box at Evesham for a brew, occasionally.  Some signalmen wouldn't allow it, and I don't think any of them permitted the grubby ones to take a seat.

Coal used to be delivered in sacks each containing one hundredweight. These were generaly open at the top and intended for re-use. The weight of the sack could be significant and was meant to be indicated on a small brass or copper disk riveted to the sack.
A UK hundredweight was 112 pounds weight. A USA hundredweight was 100 pounds weight, sometimes called a short hundredweight, versus the long hundredweight used in the UK.

Therefore if the weight of the empty sack was marked as being 4 pounds, the full bag of coal should weigh 116 pounds. A tolerance of one pound was permitted to allow for the sack wearing and becoming lighter in weight, or becoming impregnated with coal dust and therefore heavier.

The coal merchant was expected to tip the bags of coal into a ground level coal bunker, or tip the coal into a ground level manhole cover that led into a basement coal store.

These days, the handling of one hundredweight bags is either prohibited or at least very strongly discouraged.

Most coal and coal derived patent fuels are these days supplied in 25 kilo bags to ease handling, a move to 20 kilo bags is likely as people get weaker.

Large volumes of coal may be delivered loose in a tipper truck. It should be weighed at the depot by a weighbridge or other suitable means.

BTW, some old and still extant law or regulation requires that the customer be given a delivery note or invoice that specifies the weight and type of fuel BEFORE IT IS UNLOADED.
The accepted wording is "the delivery that you are about to receive contains XXX kilos of [insert grade or description of fuel]"

For example my last delivery note reads "the delivery that you are about to receive contains 20 bags, each 25 kilos of best Welsh anthracite small nuts. Total 500 kilos. AND 4 bags each 25 kilos of best Welsh anthracite beans, total 100 kilos"

It is an offence to deliver the coal and THEN supply the delivery note.

Neither. My memory was the lightweight. I was going to say a full hundredweight, but the logical part of my brain said "That can't be right!". It was though, and coalmen of that era tended to have misshapen ankles as a result.

I vaguely recall a TV advert with Bob Carolgees, where his mum ran off with the coalman. There was a brief shot of him walking past the window with her suitcase on his shoulder, which made me laugh.

I certainly remember coal deliveries in the 1950s, and the coalman with that leather hooded cape thing on his back. In our suburb the 1930s terraces had access for coal via the alley round the back, and with long gardens it was some distance to go even with the coal bunker down the far end - 70 m easily. Ours on the end was easier, with the coal bunker in the "garage" (a wartime improvisations that was falling apart even then).

The routine was for the coalman to back up to the  lorry, where another man on the back (maybe the driver) would manoeuvre a sack from transit position (leaning in ranks against the front board of the platform) to the edge where it could be transferred onto  his back. I never did really understand how it was supported, and held upright enough with one hand that only a moderate amount fell out on the way. Something like this (https://previews.agefotostock.com/previewimage/medibigoff/55ea6b285a20bed123c7d0b7899c23d0/hez-1192290.jpg).

The national coal board, large gas works, and some larger coal merchants were among the last major users of coal burning road vehicles. It was considered that these industries should show faith in UK produced coal rather than using imported oil.

Some later steam road vehicles were quite modern and equipped with pneumatic tyres, electric lighting, power brakes and sometimes even power steering. Some were used into 1960s.

Coal in the '60s was definitely in the hundredweight. It was the unit of manhandlable sacks.  1974 at the tender age of 14 I was dragging cwt bags of cement around the building site: "hug it like a woman" declared the boss - remember this was Life on Mars era. I was 16 before I could finally shoulder a bag.

He used to laugh at me struggling - remember this was Life on Mars era.

I joked that I bet he couldn't carry two ... (Smart, wicked and devious young man).

He managed it - just - one on each shoulder - for his honour was at stake.

But my, he was purple, and I thought he was about to die.

Tom, my first boss was a Covid victim and I miss him.

The 25 kg single person lift and that is without moving it very far and the likely reduction to 20 kg has nothing to do with people becoming weaker; it is all about reducing the long term skeletal and muscular injuries caused by such work.

My grandfather who worked as a labour / hod carrier and other similar work end up being crippled from his mid 50's because of his work

The last coalman I knew to talk to over a beer walked on his insteps. Some former colleagues showed up at the pub one day, all instantly recognisable from the same malady. On happier reminiscences, I recall being asked, aged about 8, to post a card to the coalman one summer morning, for my dad's annual filling of the coal cellar while it was cheap. The coalman arrived that afternoon.

Now, about decarbonisation plans. Did you see that Grant's got a new one? This was last week, and it's a follow-on to the Jet Zero consultation last year (which we seem to have missed). This is the relevant DfT page (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/jet-zero-strategy-delivering-net-zero-aviation-by-2050), and this the actual report (https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1091834/jet-zero-strategy.pdf).

This should one of the easier fields for the government's concocters of plans, since the main players are big companies who already have programmes to do most of the hard stuff, and the plan just needs to pull them together and fill in the gaps.

This section may be a bit of a surprise to some:

There was a paper in Nature (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-24091-y) last year that goes into more detail, and has this summary of the non-CO₂ emissions and what they may do:

There's something about the presentation of that paper that makes me a bit suspicious, but you need to be an expert to really know if it's making sense - like how methane has a net cooling effect. But wasn't the overall effect of Covid, stopping most flights, supposed to be a net cooling - and only two years ago? (Or have I misrecollected that?)

I don't know, but it is good that these are being at least considered.