Among all the contributions to the decarbonisation session at the Railway Industry Association’s 2021 Innovation Conference, two stood out.
One speaker claimed there was a legal obligation for diesel traction to be withdrawn by 2040. This is untrue. What we have is an aspiration from a here-today/gone-tomorrow junior transport minister to withdraw all ‘diesel-only’ trains by an arbitrary date. It is described as an ‘ambition’ in the recent Williams-Shapps White Paper.
According to that speaker, the Transport Decarbonisation Task Force had deemed the diesel-only withdrawal target ‘achievable’. But, as reported in last month’s ‘Moving Wheels’ (p84), Porterbrook Chief Executive Mary Grant injected a rare, but welcome, dose of reality into the politically-correct consensus.
Having pointed out that ‘as commendable as that target is, it is wholly unrealistic’, Ms Grant explained it is unrealistic ‘because we haven’t started a rollout of a major programme of electrification’. She added that, while battery and hydrogen ‘have their place’, in the absence of electrification only the existing diesel fleets have the power and speed to maintain the timetable.
As a result, the 2040 aspiration is ‘an unrealistic time…
