German Rail website showing environmental impact

[Anonymous]

n012944

 

schlimm:

 

  You also claimed that the DB statement of using electricity from 100% renewable sources was hype, again without any evidence that it is.

 

 

They have plans on running 100% on renewable sources, however they are a long way off...

"Germany has made many remarkable strides towards sustainability in the past few years – they were the first nation to announce the abolition of nuclear power, the entire country already runs on 20% renewable energy, and now Deutsche Bahn, Germany’s national railway operator, has announced plans to run all of its trains on 100% renewable energy by the year 2050"

Read more: German Trains Will Run on 100% Renewable Energy by 2050! deutsche bahn renewable energy – Inhabitat - Sustainable Design Innovation, Eco Architecture, Green Building 

http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/intelligent-energy/germanys-road-to-a-100-renewable-railway/8209

http://www.cooladelaide.org/articles/2011/08/trains-powered-by-sun-and-wind-all-aboard/ 

The articles are informative.  Unfortunately, renewable electric energy is a long way from prime time. Whether the Germans or anyone can get there by 2050 is problematic. According to one of the articles, the German rail operator has signed a 15 year contract for renewable energy to meet eight per cent of its needs. Good! Where does the other 92 per cent come from?

Most if not every form of renewable energy requires fossil fuel or nuclear back-up for when the wind stops blowing, the cloud cover is too thick for solar, and the water stops flowing. Water stop flowing? Yep, in the case of severe droughts, hydro-plants have to shut down. In fact, given the drought in Texas, if we don't get at least half of our average rainfall by June, we will have to shut down some of our steam electric stations irrespective of their fuel source.

The operative word in electric energy is steam. No water; no steam. No steam; no force to turn the turbines. No turbines; no electricity. No electricity in Texas in the summer; no air conditioning. Not a pretty picture. Could it happen? You bet!  

In February 10 the wind stop blowing in west Texas. It switched off quickly.  And before the fossil fueled generators could be synchronized with the grid, which turned out to be a photo finish, we came very close to seeing the whole system fall over. If he state grid operator did not have any fossil fuel and nuclear plants to fall back on, it would have been Katy Bar the Door.    

According to the U.S. Department of Energy, the Toyota Prius base model gets 51 mpg in the city and 48 mpg on the highway for a combined average of 50 mpg.  The only diesel in the U.S. that comes close to the Prius, according to the energy department, is the VW Passat, which is rate for 31 mpg in the city and 43 mpg on the highway for a combined average of 35 mpg.  The Golf and Jetta come in at a close second with 30, 42, and 34. I don't know anything about the cars in Germany, but I presume that the Golf and Jetta are reasonably popular there.

[erikem]

Sam1

 

In February 10 the wind stop blowing in west Texas. It switched off quickly.  And before the fossil fueled generators could be synchronized with the grid, which turned out to be a photo finish, we came very close to seeing the whole system fall over. If he state grid operator did not have any fossil fuel and nuclear plants to fall back on, it would have been Katy Bar the Door.    

I've seen several proposal's for "smart grid" enabled electric car charger/inverter combinations, one of the earliest written by Alec Brooks for AC Propusion (N.B. I knew Alec from high school and UCB). The point was that the charger/inverters could help stabilize the grid during rapid changes in load or generation. Alec postulated that the savings from stabilizing the grid could offset much of the cost of the electric car. Unfortunately, electric trains don't have the same flexibility in electric power demand.

- Erik

[schlimm]

Nice selective reading!  I guess it's easy to ignore a clear ,current statement on the DB site.  The thread topic was about intercity express passenger trains, not locals, transit or freights and how DB makes available a calculator to show environmental impact for three modes of transport.  Yet references are made to a commuter service in Dallas - Ft. Worth and to articles dealing with the entire DB plan as of  last year.  As to diesel cars, in Germany the VW Polo TDI gets close to 70 mpg, to name one popular model.   You know, if you prefer driving or to not having first rate intercity trains on appropriate routes, that is your privilege.  But anything that even hints of possible alternatives to what we currently have here really creates an uproar of potshots.  The same is true on the current thread about the end of ATK and has been every time someone starts a thread about improving our pathetic passenger rail system.  And the criticisms are predictable.

[Anonymous]

schlimm

Nice selective reading!  I guess it's easy to ignore a clear ,current statement on the DB site.  The thread topic was about intercity express passenger trains, not locals, transit or freights and how DB makes available a calculator to show environmental impact for three modes of transport.  Yet references are made to a commuter service in Dallas - Ft. Worth and to articles dealing with the entire DB plan as of  last year.  As to diesel cars, in Germany the VW Polo TDI gets close to 70 mpg, to name one popular model.   You know, if you prefer driving or to not having first rate intercity trains on appropriate routes, that is your privilege.  But anything that even hints of possible alternatives to what we currently have here really creates an uproar of potshots.  The same is true on the current thread about the end of ATK and has been every time someone starts a thread about improving our pathetic passenger rail system.  And the criticisms are predictable. 

All reading is selective.

I was not comparing the TRE and Amtrak to the ICE or any other system.  I was using the TRE example to help frame a question, which probably did not come across as well as it should have.  

The operating environmental footprint of the TRE, as well as Amtrak, is different than the lab or research expected outcomes.  Does the information regarding the ICE's environmental footprint have the same issue? That is the only point that I was trying to make. 

According the the VW Australian website, since I am in Australia, the Polo diesel gets the equivalent of a combined 51.65 miles per gallon.  

[Paul Milenkovic]

That one cannot ride an ICE train to rural towns in Austria or Slovenia is completely relevant to the environmental impact of trains.  Whereas 90% of USA passenger miles are by car, a full 80% of EU passenger miles are by car.  Of the 20% of common carrier passenger miles in the EU, these are about evenly divided between train, bus, airplane, and yes, boat.  Of these four common carrier modes, the airplane shows the greatest growth and is increasing in market share, in environmentally conscious Europe no less.

I wonder if there is a bus forum with heated discussions that the EU is besting us in bus service? (Those sleek motorcoach buses you see in the US are largely European designs.)  Are there sharp words exchanged on another forum that we don't have enough passenger boat service in the U.S.?  (Ferry boats are an important common carrier mode in NYC and the San Francisco Bay area.  Boats and ships preceded trains which preceded cars.  Are people critical of planners that major cities in Texas were built remote from major waterways?  Many of the major cities of Europe were built around major waterways.)

We are having this discussion because trains are kewl in the ways buses or boats are not.  The mere suggestion that trains are not Positively Perfect in Every Way is provocative to people.

That train slice of European passenger miles, that 5 percent, requires government budget contributions on the scale of the entire U.S. Federal highway budget.  My factual source for this?  Start with the appendices to the Vision Report.  When the consortium of state DOT people published that report, everyone in the advocacy community was dancing with glee, "Yay, someone in government supports spending 10 billion/year on intercity trains instead of the paltry 1 billion+ that underfunded unloved Amtrak gets."  I don't think many people in the advocacy community actually read the thing or thought through the implications of the numbers.

With respect to DB claiming to power their electric trains 100% from renewable sources, I am simply not going to sit back and let such a claim go unchallenged.  Just because it comes from a quasi-governmental agency of a G-8 country and a major industrial power doesn't make it automatically true.  France is said to have 80% of their power from nuclear plants, and there are political, cultural, and historical reasons why France chooses to do this, but Germany famously is in the process of repudiating nuclear power.

I can imagine that a concern (I think the German word is Betriebwirschaft) in Germany can enter a contract to purchase "100 percent renewable power."  Our local power company offers the same thing.  It works something like this (the numbers are hypothetical for purpose of illustration).  Suppose the power company generates, on average, 990 MWHr from conventional sources, 10 MWHr from wind and other sanctioned renewables.  To recover the higher expense of the renewables, the power company offers a deal "Go Green!  For a mere 5 cents/kWHr extra, you can get your power from non-polluting renewable sources!"

99 % of electric customers (by kWHr usage) don't care to do this, and one particular customer tells himself, "Why should I hand extra money to some big corporate power company, when I can save that money and purchase high efficiency appliances?"  On the other hand, 1% of electric customers think the bragging rights of "100 percent renewable power" is worth the extra electric charge.

So the power company says to me, Paul Milenkovic, here, because you are a stick-in-the-mud about our windmills, all of your yearly kWHr, small that they may be owing to your fancy-schmantzy Energy Star appliances, you kWHrs' come from the pool of 990 mWHr from our belching coal plants.  Tom Metcalfe, because you are paying the windmill surcharge, you get to tell your supermarket customers that all of the considerable kWHrs needed to run your freezer cases and cold storage comes from the 10 mWHr from our windmills.

This notion that Metcalfe Markets is 100% renewable powered is an accounting gimmick.  It does not take into account that when the wind goes calm, Metcalfe Market still runs their freezers and DB still runs their scheduled trains, during which time they are drawing on polluting power, be it dirty coal or radioactive-waste-making nuclear, or fish-killing hydro.

Were Metcalfes, however, to use some local thermal storage system, maybe blocks of ice or something, to modulate their electric usage to electric demand, then I could give them their propers for doing something about the environment.  As it is, it is one corporation paying another corporation for bragging rights, and not much more.

This is not just about linking to the DB Web site to show people the environmental benefits of trains; it is linking to DB to share some corporate hype about the environmental benefit of trains.  To suggest that I am angry is perhaps to engage in what Phil McGraw might call projection.  I am not angry about DB, but will admit to being annoyed with hype and spin, whether it comes from a money-grubbing corporation or a pure-spirited advocacy community.

Over at Steam and Preservation, one can have frank discussions about ejector nozzle efficiencies and whether steam locomotives reached their maximum practical performance or whether other things could be tried, were steam to have been kept longer or were steam to return if we run out of oil.  Among the members of the passenger advocacy community, it frustrates me that similar discussions about the merits of passenger trains are denigrated as disloyal to The Cause and serving the dark purposes of train haters.

With respect to the efficacy and expediency of overstating the advantages of trains in the face of real problems with CO2 emissions and energy supply, Richard Feynman famously remarked about NASA's hype and spin on the merits of the Space Shuttle.  NASA had facts and figures demonstrating the Shuttle to be safe, and even ex post facto a major accident, whom are you going to believe, NASA or some crank theoretical physicist dipping rubber into his water glass?

 Feynman's remark "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." applies to other things as well.